Public Health

Summary

This document describes how we use information we collect about you. It tells you about:

How and why we use personal information.
The types of information we collect
Circumstances when we may have to share personal information.
How we process information in line with Data Protection law.
How we secure and manage information.
Who to contact if you have a query about how we collect and use your personal information.

Your Personal Information and how we use it

Sunderland City Council's Public Health Team is responsible for delivering the Public Health functions laid out in section 73A of the National Health Service Act 2006 and Section 30 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

This includes making provision for the following mandatory functions:

Contraception and Sexual Health Services.
NHS Health Checks
The National Child Measurement Programme.
Provision of public health advice to NHS Commissioners.
Ensuring plans are in place to protect the health of the public.
Health Visiting checks for children aged 0-5.

Additionally, a range of other non-mandatory services are put in place, such as healthy lifestyle services, stop smoking services and drug and alcohol services.

The Council's Public Health Team generally purchases these services from other organisations. As a result, it does not routinely collect personal data; this is done by the organisations directly providing the services. However, there are some instances where personal data is collected. Most commonly these include:

When members of the public directly contact us.
Where members of the team are involved in processes such as Serious Case Reviews, Serious Untoward Incidents, Child Death Overview Panels, Drug Related Death Reviews or audits of suicides.

We will only use information collected lawfully in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and future UK Data Protection legislation.

Ordinarily, we will not use any information we hold about you for any purpose other than that for which it was collected. However, in some rare cases there may be a need to share information. This may happen:

In order to find and stop crime and fraud.
If there are serious risks to the public, our staff or to other professionals.
To protect a child.
To protect adults who are thought to be at risk, for example if they are frail, confused or cannot understand what is happening to them.

In all of these cases, the risk must be serious before we can override your right to privacy.

If we are worried about your physical safety, or feel we need to take action to protect you from being harmed in other ways, we will discuss with you and, if possible, get your permission to tell others about your situation before doing so.

If we have to share information without your consent, we will record what information is shared and the reasons for doing so.

What information do we collect?

For the purposes of monitoring Public Health in Sunderland, we collect a range of anonymised personal information such as births and deaths and information about access to Public Health services. This personal information does not include any identifying data and may be obtained from a range of agencies and organisations including:

NHS Digital.
Public Health England

Subject to you providing consent, if necessary, we may collect sufficient information about you to identify you and contact you again in the future. This enables us to act upon enquiries and provide advice and information as required.

This information may be recorded in writing, or electronically on a computer, or a mixture of both. The type of information we will collect is as follows:

Personal information (such as name, address, contact number, email, IP address).
Information about queries raised.
Information about any public health matters you are interested in.
Information about contact with public services and experiences of using public health services.

How is the information we collect used?

The information we collect may be used in the following ways:

To help answer any queries you have raised.
To help us ensure that the information we provide about public health matters is accessible and of interest to the public
To help us understand what areas of public health people are interested in.
To help improve the quality of delivery of services.
To help ensure that people are kept safe.
To ensure that records are kept securely and safely disposed of when necessary.

Automated processing of data is not used to support any of these functions.

Do we share information about you with anyone?

There are times when it will be appropriate for us to share relevant information with other agencies/organisations to help us resolve your queries and improve the quality of local services. These agencies/organisations may also share your information with us if you have given them permission to do so. Information sharing may take place between us and the following partners:

GPs.
NHS professionals.
Other Council Departments.
Providers of other public health services we purchase.
Support groups / agencies that could help you.

We do not share information about you with anyone without your consent unless the law requires or allows us to do so. We will always seek your positive consent to share information if there is no legal basis to share it.

In all cases where we must pass on information, we will only share the minimum amount of information required and will use the most secure method to transfer it; wherever possible data will be anonymised (i.e. does not identify you personally) or encrypted.

The lawful basis on which we use this information

We need to collect and use your personal data in order to comply with the Public Health functions laid out in section 73A of the National Health Service Act 2006 and Section 30 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Our lawful basis for processing is therefore that we have a statutory obligation as defined by Article 6(1)(c) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Some of the information we may hold is classed as special category information - primarily ethnicity, gender and any health conditions. Our lawful basis for processing this data is provided by Article 9(2)(h) of the GDPR - the provision of health or social care.

How we look after your information

All information is held securely with physical, organisational and electronic access controls to ensure it is secure when it is stored and when it is transferred elsewhere.

How long we will look after your information

We will keep information in line with Sunderland City Council's Retention Schedule for the Public Health Team, and we will only keep it as long as we need it. When we no longer need your information, it will be destroyed securely by deletion of electronic records and shredding of paper files.

Requesting access to your personal data

You can find out if we hold any personal information about you by making a 'subject access request' under the General Data Protection Regulation. You can do this on our website

In addition, you have the right to request the rectification or erasure of your personal data, and to object to, or request restriction of, processing your data.

If you have any concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal information, or wish to log a complaint, we request that you contact us in the first instance.