One year on from the return of public health to local authorities the BMA have registered their concerns about the way that councils have spent ‘their' money. In a nutshell that attitude sums up how far we still have to go to make the case for localism.

100 years ago public health was very much focused on physical issues involving clean water, slum clearance and prevention of communicable diseases.

Now if we really want to increase public health we have to focus much more on lifestyles and specifically obesity, smoking and alcohol. These are not primarily medical issues and also need to focus more on exercise, good employment and access to affordable food