Press harder on the gas for prevention

Prevention is making a comeback! It is being talked about seriously both by our new government and the Covid19 Inquiry. John Deanfield of the British Society for Heart Failure wants to see an individualised prevention programme that sits loudly alongside NHS  treatment and care (https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/23/pre-nhs-disease-prevention-health-checks). This is good news for health as there is good evidence that a properly resourced new service outside the hospital could make a huge positive difference to individuals . It would replicate some of the effective model developed for HIV and AIDS in the 80s by creating a protected stream of funded preventive initiatives.

This is what I have called the first layer in prevention in my new book https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/autobiography/against-the-flow. But if you peel back the deep underlying causes of ill health and inequality, they must also be integral to a successful prevention initiative. We will fail yet again if we think that heart disease and stroke, cancers, vaccinations and all the preventable lifestyle issues like smoking and obesity will disappear with an individualised programme. We need to home in on a population programme too. We have caste iron evidence , not only that socioeconomic disadvantaged communities suffer most , but also that the previous Labour government led successful action at every level to reduce health inequalities. They have since widened under the Conservatives.

Labour has declared that the NHS needs to be reformed . It's time for us to see wider prevention as integral to that reform.