Child health app

Public Health England has developed an app which provides child health profiles for England. Arranged by local authority, the app gives uses key health indicators to give data about the health and wellbeing of children in England.

Read more here.http://www.chimat.org.uk/profiles/app

Suicide prevention strategy launched

On Monday the Department of Health launched the new suicide prevention strategy for England.  Have a read here.

RCN publishes factsheets on new NHS commissioning structure

If you get bogged down and confused by the new NHS commissioning structures, the Royal College of Nursing has published some plain-English fact sheets.  Have a read here.

Health inequalities gap widening, say King's Fund

You've probably seen this already since it has been all over the news but I thought I would direct you to the original report by the King's Fund which shows some interesting correlations between socio-economic status and health behaviours.  The report found that people with lowest income and no qualifications were most likely to smoke, drink, be overweight and take no exercise.  There are some interesting recommendations for national policy and it is well worth a read.

National Mental Health and Wellbeing Framework published

Last week the government published the UK Mental Health and Wellbeing Implementation Framework, which sets out organisational targets to achieve the six objectives in the 'No Health without Mental Health' strategy.  Read more here.

Stats, stats and more stats

If you are ever looking for statistics about health and social care in the UK, don't miss out the NHS Information Centre.  It has statistics about hospitals, health and lifestyles, social care, and mental health.  If you want to know how many school kids have taken drugs, or how much GPs earn, or how many hip replacement operations took place last year, this is the place to look.

Research jargon

If you get confused by research and want to know what it all means, have a look at this user-friendly NHS glossary.  It explains the differences between different types of studies, and has lots of difficult-to-understand concepts explained in a nutshell in layman's terms.