The Pharmacy and Public Health Forum (PPHF) was established in July 2011 to provide leadership for the development, implementation and evaluation of public health practice for pharmacy in the Government’s drive to improve the public’s health.  The PPHF reports to the Department of Health and in future will report to Public Health England. It will lead on developing the pharmacy contribution to public health, taking into account both the Government’s and local public health priorities. The PPHF has established 6 task groups for specific work streams including Task Group 2, chaired by Helen Gordon, Chief Executive of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, to develop professional standards for public health practice for pharmacy.

We are currently developing public health practice standards in collaboration with the Faculty of Public Health (FPH), the Royal Society of Public Health, employers, Directors of Public Health and public health pharmacy experts. The standards are for pharmacists and pharmacy teams across Great Britain.

The standards are being developed based on 9 core competency areas of public health practice (as defined by FPH), each underpinned by a range of supporting statements and illustrated by practice examples.

We hope these standards will highlight the valuable role pharmacy teams can play in public health and help to ensure people experience a consistently high quality of public health services and interventions across pharmacy settings. They are intended to provide a framework to help pharmacy teams, commissioners and providers design, implement, deliver and monitor high quality public health through pharmacy.

We will keep you updated of progress on the standards regularly on this page.