Excerpt from the Discussion Paper by Helen Christmas and Justin Srivastava:
Read the Discussion Paper in full here
Public health approaches, whilst differentfrom traditional models of response policing which often focus on individuals and enforcement, build on police experiences of neighbourhood policing and problem solving. Public health approaches in policing support the Policing Vision 2025, which talks about proactive preventative activity, working with partners to problem-solve, vulnerability, cohesive communities, improving data sharing, evidence-based practice and whole- system approaches.
The idea of applying public health approaches to areas such as road safety, drugs and violence is not new; but the termis being used to mean different things and no nationally or internationally agreed definitionsof ‘public health approaches in policing’ currently exist.
This paper is intended to support police and their partners in understanding and applying public health approaches to policing.