Shifting to prevention requires a tougher stance on harmful products
When the Government announced its ambition to move from sickness to prevention, the public health community gave a collective cheer after decades of making the case.
Treatment can act as a sticking plaster, but as Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London, famously said, ‘why treat people and send them back to the conditions that made them sick’. It’s only by preventing people from getting ill in the first place by improving the quality of the multitude of factors that determine how healthy we are, including our houses, our education, our jobs, our diet, our community and our access to clean air, will we ever make a meaningful improvement to the nation’s health and wellbeing.
The ambition represents a bold and welcome shift in national policy and gives long-awaited recognition from the centre to the power of prevention at a local level.