The scale of the challenge faced by local authorities taking on their new public health responsibilities from April was starkly laid out this week by an article in the medical magazine The Lancet which received wide national media coverage.

The article on mortality changes, 'UK health performance: findings of the Global Burden of Disease study', said that while life expectancy in the UK increased by four years from 1990 to 2010 it was still below the average for similar industrialised nations despite the huge investment in the NHS and despite six decades of public health programmes.