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It is far more cost effective and fairer to prevent the development of poor health than it is to treat its consequences.
This was the central message from the Health Improvement Commission.
The body hosted a day-long conference focussing on prevention and partnership which was also an opportunity to explain more about its work.
HIC is a charity that had its genesis in Health & Social Care's 2016 Partnership of Purpose policy letter with the aim of empowering, enabling and encouraging healthy living.
Since October 2018 it has operated independently from government, with a role to deliver States strategies that have health improvement at their core.
HIC covers five different workstreams: nutrition; physical activity; alcohol, tobacco, and drugs; weight management; and social prescribing.
It is funded by three committees, Health & Social Care, Environment & Infrastructure and Education, Sport & Culture under a single service level agreement.
"That provides us with a pragmatic and flexible commissioning arrangement, which is focused on high trust, collaboration, and a shared vision for outcomes that we all want to achieve," said Simon Sebire.
"The commission has allowed us also to bring together related but previously separate areas of health improvement under one roof."
Since its formation it has also raised more than £600,000 in further funding, which has gone to projects like the Bailiwick Social Prescribing pilot and tagretting school lunch programmes.
"Our vision is clear. It's for our islands to be places that support us all to live our healthiest lives. And our mission is to empower, enable and encourage healthy living," said Dr Sebire. "These words aren't accidental, and neither is the order in which we present them.
"Good Health has to start by empowering people to focus on the building blocks of their health, such as their jobs, affordable and adequate homes, and good education, as well as a whole range of policies and not only, and often not, health policies, across government that can create the conditions in which people's health will flourish.
"People are also empowered by being able to access timely and evidence-based treatment services when they need them, such as for substance use dependence, or to lose weight in the long term.
"With these building blocks in place, people can then be empowered by creating surroundings and environments from schools to hospitals and shops, workplaces, GP practices, restaurants and roads, which make health easier for people to achieve on a daily basis.
"Once people have been empowered, and they've been enabled, people are much more likely to be able to act on messages that attempt to encourage them. We mustn't fall into the trap of encouraging them first, and then expecting any change when our surroundings do very little to support our behaviors."
HIC strives to be a pragmatic public health agency, working with agility while sticky closely to the principle that its work should be evidence based.
Monitoring has shown its work has led to increase levels of active travel in primary schools, permanent changes to healthier nutrition being available at early years providers, more fruit and vegetables being bought at Guernsey College cafes, changes in public knowledge about low risk drinking guidelines.
It has also seen thousands of children provided with substance use education, and people losing weight to put their diabetes in remission and going forward for surgery they would not otherwise have been able to have.
Levels of overweight and obesity among young school children at the end of their time in primary school are now falling where the trend elsewhere is on the rise.
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