Editorial

Across contemporary public health research, one theme repeatedly surfaces: children’s wellbeing depends not only on individual choices but also on the systems, environments and relationships that surround them. The three original research papers in this edition each illuminate this idea from a different angle. Rose et al. demonstrate that improving adolescents’ nutrition requires reshaping school food environments through a Whole School Food toolkit that embeds a coherent, health-promoting culture and meaningfully involves young people in identifying both the barriers they face and the changes that would support healthier choices. A similar emphasis on lived experience underpins the work of Wittels et al., who use co-production with mothers in a low socioeconomic community to uncover the practical, familial and environmental obstacles to healthy diet and activity and to design forms of support that empower rather than prescribe. Complementing these perspectives, Taylor et al. show that protecting preschool children from preventable home injuries depends on equipping the practitioners who support families, demonstrating that even brief, targeted training can significantly enhance knowledge, confidence and practice. Together, the studies highlight that children’s health is best advanced when the systems and adults around them are engaged, empowered and adequately supported.

Continuing the focus on children, one of this edition’s feature articles by Alkhatib and Obita highlights a widening gap between the UK’s obesity prevention efforts and the realities faced by minority ethnic children, arguing that despite decades of national strategies, obesity rates and obesity-related comorbidities have continued to rise disproportionately among Black and Asian populations. A focus on inequalities is also evident in two of the Current Topics & Opinions pieces. Olarewaju warns that recent US policy decisions to withdraw from WHO and to suspend USAID managed foreign assistance risk deepening global inequalities in childhood immunisation, disproportionately affecting low-income countries where fragile health systems, conflict and supply-chain instability already leave millions of children without routine vaccines. Pearson-Stuttard and colleagues similarly foreground the structural nature of health inequalities within the UK, illustrating through the work of an NHS Trust Health Inequalities Programme Board how systematic measurement, community engagement and targeted interventions, such as addressing higher non-attendance rates or unequal emergency admissions among deprived groups, can help reduce avoidable gaps in access and outcomes.

The two other Current Topics & Opinions articles focus on antimicrobial resistance and social prescribing. Ackerley and Bloomfield argue that addressing antimicrobial resistance requires a fundamental shift in public hygiene behaviour, highlighting how widespread misconceptions about cleanliness and inconsistent public messaging hinder effective, targeted hygiene practices. Melam, meanwhile, explores the ethical terrain surrounding Social Prescribing Link Workers, whose rapidly expanding role in tackling social determinants of health exposes gaps in existing ethical guidance and raises pressing questions about power, accountability and equity within evolving models of care.

This edition also includes the first systematic scoping review of healthy planning frameworks. Mapping 61 tools intended to integrate health considerations into the design of urban environments, De La Haye and colleagues reveal a highly fragmented landscape in which most frameworks focus on narrow aspects of the built environment while rarely addressing specific health outcomes or questions of equity.

Finally, in the second feature article of this edition, Tin and colleagues outline the Pacific region’s ongoing struggle with non-communicable diseases, highlighting that despite notable advances, major challenges remain in scaling up NCD prevention efforts. The authors argue for a transformative, system-wide approach in which strengthened governance structures, sustainable financing and the integration of NCD prevention into national development strategies are key priorities.