I’m delighted to promote The Military Health Survey 2024, which will investigate the health needs and experiences of serving personnel and their families, in Wiltshire. We have commissioned this research from Healthwatch Wiltshire, the independent health and social care champion.
This work has come out of our growing partnership with Wiltshire’s military leadership, who are co-developing the project. I cannot overstate the importance of this relationship, as we seek to understand better this key population.
From existing research, we know that the overall health of the military population is good, compared to the general population. We also know, however, that in some circumstances, tobacco smoking rates and alcohol consumption is higher, and there are challenges around the frequency of common mental health conditions.
Cllr Ian Blair Pilling, cabinet member for Wiltshire Public Health, says: We are proud of our military associations in Wiltshire and we know that having service personnel living and working here enriches our communities. We are already committed to working closely with our military as we are signed up to our Armed Forces Covenant to provide them with help and advice. This means that the military, who serve this country so well, have a welcome and supportive home in Wiltshire. I am very pleased we are supporting this important initiative to find out more about health matters in our Armed Forces communities. This will help us work together to ensure they have access to the services and support they need”.
My main concern, and that of our military colleagues, is that we simply don’t know enough about the health of our military. This Healthwatch Wiltshire survey is an invaluable opportunity to boost our intelligence, so we can continue to make evidence-based decisions and prioritise resources where they are needed most. It’s critical that we get ahigh response rate, so please can I ask you to promote this survey in any forum you can.
The survey can be accessed using this link.
