Public Health England is an advocate of community pharmacy and its pivotal role in improving the population’s health, according to its national executive director of health and wellbeing.

Professor Kevin Fenton outlined PHE’s vision for community pharmacy at the British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers’ annual conference on June 18. This vision includes pharmacy teams fully integrated into local primary care networks and pharmacists as an accepted part of the primary care family.

Greater integration would encourage pharmacy services to be delivered more uniformly around the country, said Prof Fenton. “We’re keen to get pharmacy around the table. We’re seeing a patchy offering – we want to see this done in a more systematic way.”

Pharmacy had an important role to play in medicines optimisation, which provided opportunities for discussing health promoting interventions. And a real strength of community pharmacy was its ability to support adherence to blood pressure medication. PHE was keen for pharmacy to deliver more NHS Health Checks, and this could be a service that healthy living pharmacies could focus on.

Although 30 per cent of illness was accounted for by genetic predisposition, 40 per cent was due to behaviour patterns. The biggest killers in the UK, ranked in order, were: tobacco, high blood pressure, poor diet, inactivity, and alcohol.

Social drivers included economic prosperity and a good start in life. “Individual behaviours do matter but the reality is that our health is impacted by a range of wider determinants. Health is more than healthcare.”