Prevention in healthcare: turning words into action

Abstract

Although the words “prevention is better than the cure” are often said, this still largely remains a mantra. The UK government has committed to a shift from “sickness to prevention” in the NHS.1 However, there is vagueness about how programmes that will improve health outcomes will be implemented. Twenty years ago, Derek Wanless, a former banker, was appointed by Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to conduct a review of the NHS’s future needs and the likely costs. The Wanless review proposed a “fully engaged scenario,” which placed health improvement and prevention as a crucial element of a strategy to relieve demand on the NHS. If anything, the opposite has happened since the report was published in 2002. On many measures, including life expectancy, the health of the British population has stagnated or has got worse. But part of the problem was that it was never clear how the iconic “fully engaged” population was to become reality.2 So how can we shift the mantra of prevention into reality? It is ever more important that we do so. The UK is experiencing an escalating pandemic of chronic ill health across the population which is resulting in a loss of productivity. In the first quarter of 2024, there were 2.8m economically inactive people in the UK due to long term …