Oireachtas Health Committee urged to take practical steps to promote health

Dr Campbell told Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane that regulation to limit access to products is more effective than asking individuals to make that choice. File picture: PA 

Policies such as moving fast food shops away from schools are far more effective at tackling obesity than blaming individuals for their choices, the Oireachtas Health Committee has been told.

However the government is stuck in “a treatment trap” where it focuses on providing more beds for more sick people instead of funding illness prevention programmes, the newly-formed Health Promotion Alliance Ireland said.

Dr Norah Campbell, lecturer in the school of business at Trinity College Dublin, urged the committee to take practical steps to promote health.

“Some businesses have disproportionate effects on human health,” she said, while acknowledging commerce is vital for the economy.

“The treatment trap is a term used to describe how governments have been forced to focus on really early and visible wins in healthcare such as hospital beds and GP provision.”

This means less money is available for prevention of illness, she said.

Instead, she suggested a small number of large changes instead of a large number of small changes.

Dr Campbell told Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane that regulation to limit access to products is more effective than asking individuals to make that choice.

Setting up green zones of 500m, 200m, and 50m around schools where certain products are not available has been shown to be more effective than a campaign in schools about how to eat healthily.

A subsidy of fruit and vegetables to make them affordable is another effective option, she said.

Irish Heart Foundation director of health promotion Janis Morrissey told the committee there is “a huge power imbalance” between individuals and businesses.

“A view of the Alliance would be that it’s not about encouraging people or imploring people to change, we know the evidence doesn’t support that,” she said.

“Instead it’s about changing the political culture in terms of what actually causes dis-health in the first place, so we are taking the pressure off individuals.”

Over-use of alcohol in Ireland

The over-use of alcohol in this country is an area where these changes could be made, the committee was told by Alcohol Action Ireland chief executive Dr Sheila Gilheany.

She compared Ireland to Norway where they drink 37% less than here, and said this is down to regulation and supports.

She told Social Democrats health spokeswoman Roisin Shortall the lobbying register is “not in-depth enough”.

This is a record of who approaches government ministers to discuss proposed changes in policy in an effort to influence them.

The committee also heard from Minister of State for Public Health, Wellbeing and the National Drugs Strategy Hildegard Naughten.

She said she is aware of the force behind industry marketing: “We need to be prepared for the marketing, the targeting of children, the presentation of food as being healthy or whatever it is, and how we target that.”

She pointed to a number of plans including the Healthy Ireland campaign which are promoting health already.