Hello everybody I'm Dr. Frank Atherton and I'm the new Chief Medical Officer
for Wales. I started work here just a couple of weeks ago I just want to tell
you a little bit about myself about where I've come from and why I've come
to Wales and what my aspirations and hopes are from time that i'm going to be
Chief Medical Officer here in Wales so I'm a general practitioner by
training but I've worked in a number of health systems I became very interested
in international development and I've worked in a number of countries around
the world and then I worked in Lancashire as a director of public
health for 10 years and more recently I've worked in Nova Scotia and my
travels and work experience around the world has convinced me of one important
thing and that is that there's no such thing as the perfect health system and a
good elements and health systems everywhere and are many good elements of
the health system here in Wales and I'm looking forward to hearing and learning
about those a lot of people asking well why did you move to Wales and
there's a number of reasons behind that decision
first of all the population size here three million people we should be able
to do something really exciting with that population size and I know that the
health indicators are improving and that's great news for Wales, we
know that the health like healthy life expectancy is improving some of the
disease specific mortality rates are getting better but there's still a huge
challenge because in some areas we lag behind England and we still face
enormous health inequalities here in Wales,
partly down to the industrial legacy partly down to areas of deprivation but
we can do better and we need to do better here in Wales so I know that
there's a level of ambition here and some of the legislation that recently
the government has put in place around particularly the health and well-being
of future generations but also the Active Travel Bill and Act and
the work around social service integration all of that shows me there's
a great ambition here to make things better for the people of Wales and I'm
really excited to be a part of that. People have asked me what my ambitions
are in my time as Chief Medical Officer here it's very early days and I'm still
forming the list of things that I'd like to really achieve but in very broad
terms I want to be part of that process of continuing to improve the health
experience of people here in Wales and to tackling health inequalities in more
concrete terms that means looking at healthy settings making sure
that the work we do in schools, and universities, in the workplace, in prisons
but that's all systematically applied in that we're driving for its health
through healthy settings at work
we need to tackle healthy behaviors with this unfinished business here around
smoking rates are improving but it's more we need to do I know that alcohol
is a big challenge here and there are other issues around addictions I'm
thinking of gambling, substance misuse, the things which really damage
individuals and damage communities and I think we can do more in those areas
but the biggest challenge I think is to create the environment in Wales the
environment which will be conducive to better health and the legislation that I
talked about really can help us to do that so that the challenge is to take
that legislation to take the framework to take the ambition here in Wales and
to turn that into something concrete to make the environment one which makes
Wales the place where people can be as healthy as they need to be so that's a
little bit about me i'm very excited to be here in Wales as the new Chief Medical
Officer I recognize that I've got a lot to learn about the health
experience here, the culture of Wales, the politics, the professionals and I'm going
to get out and about I'm going to be visiting health boards I'm going to be
out meeting people and my first few months in post will involve a lot of
listening and a lot of learning and I look forward to hearing from from you
from everybody about what you see as the challenges to help here in Wales and
what you see
equally importantly as the opportunities where can we take action to drive
forwards health for the people of Wales
thank you very much.