{"id":15536,"date":"2018-07-05T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=15536"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:58:38","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:58:38","slug":"15536-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=15536","title":{"rendered":"Health of the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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1948 did not only usher in free universal access to primary health care; it also brought with it an idea radical for its time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that the NHS should \u00e2\u20ac\u015bencourage a new attitude to health\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the promotion of good health rather than only the treatment of bad.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165*<\/p>\n

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Public health of course existed long before the NHS was established, but provision in the early 19th<\/sup>century was administered by charities and often patchy. Maternal mortality rates were high; disease was rampant. If you were a working-class man, you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect to live much longer than 30.<\/p>\n

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Major advances in the years running up to the birth of the NHS revolutionised public health but it was the founding of a comprehensive health service, free at the point of use that truly enabled public health to blossom.<\/p>\n

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Now, public health includes a wide range of services \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from health visiting and school nursing, to outbreak prevention, to environmental health, sexual health, alcohol and drug misuse recovery, weight management, immunisations and much more.<\/p>\n

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But since 2013, when provision for many of these services was transferred from the NHS to local authorities \u00e2\u20ac\u201c whose budgets have been systematically slashed under austerity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c public health is now under serious threat.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bPeople forget that even though public health under the NHS was first being carried out by local authorities until 1975, public health was from the beginning considered part and parcel of the NHS,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 explains Doctors in Unite (DiU) vice president Steve Watkins.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until the 2012 reforms that public health was totally separated from the NHS.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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And this separation, Watkins tells UniteWorks<\/em>, is what has enabled swingeing cuts to public health in the first place \u00e2\u20ac\u201c now that public health isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t considered part of health spending, its funding is easy pickings in an era of austerity.<\/p>\n

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Since public health essentially deals in long-term outcomes it can sometimes be difficult to understand its urgent importance. But GPs and other health staff on the frontline know the crucial role it plays.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re now in the midst of a childhood obesity epidemic,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 explains DiU deputy chair and GP Dr Jackie Applebee. She points to the wrongheadedness of cuts to school nurses, who can play a vital role in tackling youth obesity.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe know that a young person who is obese is much more likely to be an obese adult \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which in turn can lead to serious, chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease that end up costing the NHS much more in the long-run.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Applebee highlighted that cuts to sexual health services, particularly clinic closures, have had an immediate impact on already pressured GPs, who simply don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the resources to take on the work of specialised clinics.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHaving fewer sexual health outlets leaves patients with fewer choices \u00e2\u20ac\u201c often patients want to go to a clinic because it gives them that anonymity. Without that, they may avoid getting tested or seeking advice treatment altogether.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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The impact of deep cuts to sexual health has already surfaced \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in June, new figures showed syphilis diagnoses last year have shot up to levels not seen since 1949.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes the effects of public health services, or the lack of them, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t materialise until decades later.<\/p>\n

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Untreated post-natal depression, for example, can disrupt the critical bonding period between a child and parent, which can have lifelong consequences for generations \u00e2\u20ac\u201c research has shown that 80 per cent of long-term prisoners have attachment problems developed in babyhood, and children who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t form proper attachments with their parents often go on to raise children themselves who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t securely attached.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe know post-natal depression is best treated if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s caught very, very early on,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 explained Unite lead professional officer for health visitors Obi Amadi. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bHealth visitors who are properly resourced and trained are often the only people who can spot the signs early.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But health visiting is also under the chopping the block after several years of advances. In the last two years alone, health visitor numbers have fallen by 2,000, Obi explained. Much of their work is being delegated to other roles such as nursing associates who have less of the sort of specialist training that can help struggling new mothers before they do slip into depression.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Watkins believes that the very future of an affordable health and social care system rests on properly resourced provision for healthy aging.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to cut public health because we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel the effects right away,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bBut what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing now is stripping the lead off the roof to make buckets to catch the rain water with.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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For DiU public health specialists committee chair Ruth du Plessis, the importance of public health is a matter of social justice.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bPublic health is about looking after people who need it most,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about fairness and tackling the inequalities that lie at the heart of so much ill-health in this country.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Indeed, stubborn health inequalities in the UK now aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, in their own way, very much different from the 19th<\/sup> century \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a baby boy born today in Blackpool can expect to live to only 74 years, nearly a decade less than a baby boy born in Chelsea.<\/p>\n

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For homeless people, whose numbers have proliferated under austerity, the picture is even direr \u00e2\u20ac\u201c their life expectancy won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exceed 50.<\/p>\n

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It is these burning inequalities that father of the NHS Aneurin Bevan hoped to address when he laid out the nascent health service\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s core principles 70 years ago \u00e2\u20ac\u201c among them that that no matter who you are, or how much you earn, you deserve to be healthy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And even though today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s government may have torn the NHS and public health apart, it is this primary value \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that everyone counts \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that will always bind the two together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*NHS white paper, 1944<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This feature first appeared in Unite Works, Summer 2018<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1948 did not only usher in free universal access to primary health care; it also brought with it an idea radical for its time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that the NHS should \u00e2\u20ac\u015bencourage a new attitude to health\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the promotion of good health rather than only the treatment of bad.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165*   Public health of course existed long before the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[29,938,446],"wps_subtitle":"Our public health services are at risk, say Unite health workers","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15536"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26077,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15536\/revisions\/26077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}