Almost two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, and the limits of a neoliberal public health orthodoxy have been well and truly exposed. But instead of pushing for radical change, the left in Britain finds itself stuck in a rearguard action focused on defending the National Health Service (NHS) from the wrecking ball of privatisation.
In January 2022, Pluto published The Five Health Frontiers: A New Radical Blueprint, in which public health expert Christopher Thomas argues that we must emerge from the pandemic on the offensive – with a bold, new vision for our health and social care. He maps out five new frontiers for public health and imagines how we can move beyond safeguarding what we have, towards a revitalisation and 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, this radical blueprint calls for a fundamental redesign of our economy through ‘Public Health Net Zero’; a bold new universal public health service that is 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.
Joining us on the panel are:
Christopher Thomas, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and author of The Five Health Frontiers;
Dr Sonia Adesara, an NHS doctor and campaigner