Our NHS history
Solutions for Public Health (SPH) was set up as a not-for-profit NHS organisation back in 1995 in response to demand to improve local and national public health outcomes.
Before becoming a single organisation in 2002, we existed as a collection of separate strands, including PHRU (Public Health Resource Unit), SEPHO (South East Public Health Observatory) and OCIU (Oxford Cancer Intelligence Unit).
In 2002, with a broader portfolio of public health programmes and projects being delivered, SPH formed as a single umbrella organisation hosted by Milton Keynes Primary Care Trust to better reflect the widening impact of our public health work. For example, SPH began delivering the Drug Treatment Monitoring Unit (DTMU) for the South East, the National Obesity Observatory (NOO), the Quality Assurance Reference Centre for cancer screening for South Central (QARC), Health Profiles and a range of services to support healthcare commissioners including a priority-setting service and the Commissioning Support Appraisals Service (CSAS).
As a result of the wider changes affecting the NHS in 2013 some of the units previously delivered by SPH have moved into Public Health England, including SEPHO, OCIU, NOO, DTMU and QARC. However, SPH will continue as a standalone business unit hosted by the Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (GEM CSU) from April 2013, providing evidence based commissioning support.
As part of GEM CSU, SPH will support the NHS Commissioning Board and Public Health England (PHE) at the national level. At the local level it will support CCGs, either directly or through CSUs, and Directors of Public Health in local authorities, helping them to deliver public health advice to the NHS.
Find out more about the services that SPH offers.
Find out more about about GEM CSU at http://gemcsu.com/
