Question reference: S6W-26692
- Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 16 April 2024
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Current status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 25 April 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how often it has met with Professor Marmot in the last three years; what was discussed, and what action it has taken following any such meetings.
Answer
Scottish Government (SG) officials have met with Professor Sir Michael Marmot on various occasions during the period April 2021 - April 2024. Professor Marmot’s evidence-based approach to tackle health inequalities underpins the work of our Care and Wellbeing Portfolio and so each engagement has offered important insights into Professor Marmot’s work, helping to inform future policy development.
On 28 June 2022 Government officials met with Professor Marmot to discuss Scottish Government’s Place and Wellbeing Programme and the Care and Wellbeing Portfolio, more broadly, as well as to garner insights into the Marmot cities approach. Since then, officials have engaged with Professor Marmot as part of last year’s Public Health Scotland (PHS) Conference held on 28 November 2023. This included both a short meeting between Professor Marmot and the Permanent Secretary during the conference, plus an evening event in which senior SG officials alongside PHS, Local Government and NHS colleagues discussed priorities to improve Scotland’s health and tackle health inequalities.
In June 2023, SG and PHS soft launched the Care and Wellbeing dashboard as a source of data and intelligence to support the ambitions of the Care & Wellbeing Portfolio. This is structured around the evidence-based Marmot framework Fair Society Healthy Lives (The Marmot Review) - IHE (instituteofhealthequity.org) which looks at the wider social determinants of health, the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age which can lead to health inequalities. Work is underway to integrate this into the Scottish Public Health Observatory ScotPHO profiles (shinyapps.io) (ScotPHO) Online Profiles tool, as a distinct Care and Wellbeing profile, to provide a single repository of public health intelligence to support local action to tackle health inequalities.
The Scottish Government remains eager to learn more from Professor Marmot’s work in our wider ambition to improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.