Our responsibility for public health

As your county council, we're responsible for helping to improve the general health of everyone living in Kent, especially those who may find it difficult to stay healthy.

We're not here to give you specific advice on dealing with common health issues. The NHS website is an extremely informative resource for everything from stopping smoking to coping with cancer.

We help our partner agencies (such as the police, national health services and nursing homes) by keeping them informed on health protection issues like severe weather or outbreaks of infectious disease. The Kent Public Health Observatory collects information and statistics about the general health of our population. We also give advice to local commissioning groups to make sure that all health and care services provided in Kent meet the needs of people who live here and are the best value they can be. All data is processed in accordance with our Public Health privacy and purpose statement (PDF, 30.5 KB).

During your life - from birth, childhood, youth, parenting, later in life and at the end of life – you or your family are likely to want local health and wellbeing services. We want to support you in making positive changes to your lifestyle to improve your quality of life in Kent.

If you're passionate about improving public health and care services in your community and would like to join us, you can sign up with us at Healthwatch Kent.