Explore our five public health priorities and how they can help create a healthier, fairer Wales for everyone.
Five public health policy priorities for Wales
Longer, healthier lives and a fairer, more prosperous Wales
Everyone in Wales deserves the chance to live a long, healthy life.
By putting prevention at the heart of our approach, we can build a healthier, fairer and more prosperous Wales for the future and support a strong, sustainable health and care system.
Public Health Wales has identified five areas where action can make the biggest difference.
- Best Start in Life
- Financial Wellbeing
- Healthy Everyday Places
- Care Tailored to Local Need
- Healthy Planet, Healthy People
The best start in life
The best start in life builds lifelong health and wellbeing
The foundation for a life lived in good health is built in our early years.
Key actions:
- Consider children’s wellbeing in all policy decisions.
- Deliver the Early Years Framework for Action through cross-government leadership.
- Ensure comprehensive child health data to guide policy, target support, and track outcomes for babies and young children.
- Ensure every family can easily access Health Visitor support, and provide Flying Start based on need, not postcode.
- Embed trauma and adverse childhood experience-informed approaches from pre-pregnancy onwards.
Financial wellbeing drives better health and a prosperous economy
Secure and fairly rewarded work that pays a living wage is good for our health
Key actions:
- Ensure public bodies provide safe, secure jobs paying at least the Real Living Wage.
- Monitor progress on workplace equality, including gender, ethnicity, and disability pay gaps.
- Support people with health challenges to enter, stay in, or return to work.
- Link employment services with health support especially for those with long-term or mental health conditions so people get help when they need it.
Healthy lives start in our everyday places
When the places where we live, eat, shop, and play are healthy by default, it is easier for all of us to live healthier and happier lives.
Key actions:
- Increase the availability of healthy and affordable homes, especially social housing.
- Raise standards in private rental housing.
- Reduce exposure and availability of tobacco and vapes by licensing retailers, and extend smoke-free zones.
- Make healthier food and drink the affordable, visible options in shops and restaurants, and restrict price promotions for less healthy food and drinks.
Care tailored to local need builds health and resilience
Addressing the root causes of poor health - not just the consequences - means everyone in Wales can prosper and enjoy better health and wellbeing and our health system is resilient.
Key actions:
- Increase the yearly share of the NHS budget spent on prevention and primary and community care instead of hospital treatment.
- Join up health and community care with public services and voluntary organisations to support the whole person.
- Invest in community health facilities, skilled staff, data and digital tools that link with health records to support early and preventative care.
A healthy planet protects our people now and in the future
The health of people and the planet are interconnected. Many actions that address climate change also support longer, healthier lives.
Key actions:
- Invest in safe walking and cycling routes, footpaths, and car-free town centres.
- Make public transport accessible and affordable, including free bus travel for young people.
- Protect communities from the health harms of climate change by tackling flooding, improving food security, ensuring sufficient and quality water for private supply, and expanding access to green spaces and tree cover.
Why prevention matters
A prevention first approach matters now more than ever.
Every £1 invested in prevention can return £14 for society by creating healthier people, a stronger economy and a sustainable NHS.
Wales has a 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy for women between the least and most deprived areas. And three times more avoidable deaths in our most deprived communities.
Without change, health inequalities will continue to cost Wales £322 million in NHS hospital costs every year.
Wales faces significant health challenges:
- 1 in 4 children grow up in poverty
- 7.2 million days lost through sickness absence each year
- 18% of homes pose health risks
- 50,000 more diabetes cases expected in 10 years
- Nearly £1 billion a year – health and productivity costs of air pollution
These gaps are unfair and avoidable.
About Public Health Wales
We are the national public health organisation for Wales. We exist to help all people in Wales live longer, healthier lives.
With our partners, we aim to increase healthy life expectancy, improve health and wellbeing, and reduce inequalities for everyone in Wales, now and for future generations.
We lead long-term prevention and population health efforts, working with partners across the country to help create healthy and prosperous communities.
Our goal is a Wales where everyone can live longer, healthier lives with fair and equal access to the things that support good health and wellbeing.
By bringing evidence, partnership, and innovation together, we help to create the conditions for people and communities across Wales to thrive.
Find out more
Contact our Policy Advocacy Team: phw.advocacy@wales.nhs.uk