This second annual report of the Director of Public Health highlights the many public health challenges that affect people in Northern Ireland.

It demonstrates how the public health team tackles this complex agenda by working with many statutory, community and voluntary partner organisations across health, local government, education, housing and other sectors.

This review of the Breastfeeding strategy for Northern Ireland, was led by the Breastfeeding Strategy Review Group and carried out by the PHA. It aimed to examine progress on the recommendations of the document and potential barriers to implementation, by consulting widely with key stakeholders. A number of suggestions on the way forward towards formulating a new strategy also emerged.
 

This resource is designed to reinforce a collaborative approach between speech and language therapists, referrers and parents in the identification and management of children with developmental speech and language and communication needs (including children with feeding and/or swallowing difficulties).

This report highlights the barriers that schools in Northern Ireland have experienced in implementing
nutritional standards. In particular, it identifies the potential adverse impact that external sources
of food may have on pupils’ healthy eating practices within the school setting. It also illustrates
how the accessibility of food and drinks contradicting the standards, within the school, may limit
the success of the standards. This report further emphasises how practical constraints within the

Over the last decade Belfast has experienced significant political, economic and social change. As a consequence, the population of greater Belfast has increased substantially over the past decade. This has been as a result of both natural change and net migration gain.

This report covers the following issues

• legislation on immigration, work, health & social services and social security entitlements;
• health issues;
• migrant health priorities identified at the Stakeholder Workshop held in April 2010.
   

Factsheet for patients who have tested positive for the hepatitis C virus.

This series of Good Practice Guides is designed to share important information about health inequalities and some of the evidence-based measures that can be taken to reduce the stark differences in health and wellbeing within populations.

Issue 6 of Transmit covers a wide range of health protection issues, leading with headline statistics from the HIV and STI surveillance in Northern Ireland 2010 report, released on World AIDS Day, December 1. The report underlines the continued need for vigilance against STIs in Northern Ireland and details the emergence of lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) among men who have sex with men (MSM).

This report provides an annual update on the prevalence of tuberculosis in Northern Ireland. It gives a general overview of TB rates and statistics, and looks at both pulmonary and non-pulmonary tuberculosis cases in detail, examining the forms of therapy employed and highlighting any drug resistance. The report also includes a discussion, which considers the specifics of newly diagnosed cases (age, place of birth) and provides some comparative data for the UK and Republic of Ireland.