A top North East professor has warned the Government must not ditch its commitments to Levelling Up health in areas like the North East - and said that implementing "trickle-down" policies is likely to exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis and create new health crises.
Prof Clare Bambra - of Newcastle University 's faculty of medical sciences - said she would be "deeply disappointed" if, as rumoured, the Government ditches the promised White Paper on health disparities. As the new PM Liz Truss used Conservative Party Conference to reaffirm her plan to make "difficult choices" in pursuit of economic growth.
The previous, Boris Johnson-led, Government has promised a key policy paper setting out how it would seek to tackle health disparities - but the Guardian reported this had been cancelled. The Department of Health and Social Care has denied this, saying "no decisions have been taken".
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Prof Bambra joined organisations including the Royal College of Physicians in saying the White Paper was vital - and she's also worked with a group of public health experts to publish a five-point plan the Government should follow if it is serious about Levelling Up health. Published in Public Health in Practice, Prof Bambra, the University of Cambridge's Dr John Ford and a Newcastle team set out five overlapping principles.
These are that tackling health disparities must involve making healthy choices easier for the public, working on long-term solutions across sectors, focussing interventions locally , targeting disadvantaged communities and allocating resources to the most deprived areas.
Prof Bambra said: "I would be deeply disappointed if the Health Disparities White Paper isn't published. We still have such disparities in our region. Life expectancy is falling. We need to get this Government to implement some of the things Boris Johnson's said they would implement.
"It seems like we have moved from a focus on Levelling Up to one on trickle-down policies, which is really worrying.
"Cutting the proposed NI Increase that we have had for the last six months is also worrying. That's money that could, for example, have been spent on mental health services in the deprived areas that need them - and of course that's much of the North East. The cost-of-living crisis is going to be a public health crisis and that's particularly alarming."
Earlier this summer, local health leaders said in a shocking report that public health in the North East was "way behind" the rest of the UK - while shocking statistics show that Covid-19 hit life expectancy in the North East worst than any other area. Even before Covid, Newcastle was among the least healthy 4% of areas in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Speaking about how the Government and health authorities needed to consider the wider reasons behind ill-health, Prof Bambra said it was vital that the health consequences of wider Government policy - whether regarding the economy or housing - were considered. She said the Government risked "creating new health problems and exacerbating those already there".
She added: "Health inequalities have arisen over decades, if not centuries, but underlying them is often the same root cause: an unequal distribution of the wider determinants of health, such as access to resources, opportunities, wealth, education, and power.
"There is no silver bullet that will solve this problem. If we are serious about tacking this problem, then we’ll need a holistic approach, with long-term, collaborative and cross-government strategies that look beyond just one election cycle."
On Tuesday, new Health and Social Care Secretary Therese Coffey told Conservative Party Conference that the Government "will always be on your side, when you need care the most” and reiterated her ABCD set of priorities for the NHS - focussing on ambulances, backlogs, care and doctors and dentists.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said reports that the Health Disparities White Paper had been scrapped were "inaccurate" and that decisions were yet to be made, but did not comment further.
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