The Five Health Frontiers
A New Radical Blueprint
A transformative approach to public health and social care in the wake of Covid-19
Covid-19 has exposed the limits of a neoliberal public health orthodoxy. But instead of imagining radical change, the left is stuck in a rearguard action focused on defending the NHS from the wrecking ball of privatisation.
Public health expert Chris Thomas argues that we must emerge from Covid-19 on the offensive - with a bold, new vision for our health and care. He maps out five new frontiers for public health and imagines how we can move beyond safeguarding what we have to a radical expansion of the principles put forward by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, over 70 years ago.
Beyond recalibrating our approach to healthcare services, his radical blueprint includes a fundamental redesign of our economy through Public Health Net Zero; a bold new universal public health service fit to address the real causes of ill health; and a major recalibration in the efforts against the epidemiological reality of an era of pandemics.
Christopher Thomas is principal health fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Head of the IPPR Commission on Health and Prosperity. He is co-editor of Progressive Review, a journal of ideas and politics. He regularly comments on health and care issues in print and broadcast media, and regularly writes in the Independent and the Times. Before working at IPPR, he led on public health and inequality at major charities including Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK.
‘A brilliant exposé of how the political left in Britain is unaware of, and can start to begin to address, the effects of ever-increasing opting-out from public health and care services by those who can’
- Danny Dorling, Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford'The boldest blueprint for public health since Bevan'
- Sonia Adesara, NHS Doctor and Campaigner'The ideas in this book are as significant and radical as the birth of the NHS, it shows a new, fairer vision for improving the health of the nation and a comprehensive plan for how to do it'
- Shirley Cramer, former CEO of the Royal Society for Public Health'A vital book that shows just how broken the health status quo truly is. Thomas' work will arm campaigners to demand a better, more just public health system - and to defend human life against corporate exploitation'
- Dr Aseem Malhotra, author of 'A Statin-Free Life' and Founder of Public Health Collaboration'A well-argued plan to bring together health, social and economic justice'
- Andy McDonald MP'A fantastically well written book that shows just how much public health has been neglected in the UK and the actions we need now'
- Dr Jyotsna Vohra, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at the Royal Society for Public HealthAbbreviations
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
1. The NHS Frontier
2. The Social Justice Frontier
3. The Economic Frontier
4. The Social Care Frontier
5. The Sustainability Frontier
6. The Public Health New Deal
Epilogue: Labour’s Medicine
Notes
Index
eBook ISBN: 9780745343945
135mm x 215mm