The Health Foundation podcast

Like many other countries, the UK has a growing drug problem. In England around 3 million people take drugs and drug deaths are the highest on record at nearly 3,000 a year. In the last decade, heroin-related deaths have more than doubled and cocaine-related deaths have grown fivefold. The situation in Scotland is even worse – now the drug death capital of Europe.   The UK government tackles drugs...

Those of us working in health often focus on the government as the main agent to get things done, especially when it comes to public health. But think of all the others out there with power, particularly commercial and investment power.   There are signs that businesses and institutional investors do seem to be getting more interested in health, with some businesses starting to consider their impa...

In another year shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore some key health policy developments and look ahead to what 2022 might have in store.  With Omicron dominating the headlines and a public inquiry into the handling of COVID-19 on the horizon, has government learned – and acted on – the lessons from the start of the pandemic?   As the NHS faces the huge task of COVID-19 recovery, how will t...

For years public satisfaction with the NHS has been highest for general practice.  But even before the pandemic, rising workloads and workforce shortages had left many GPs dissatisfied and stressed. Then add a pandemic into the mix, with GPs instructed to move rapidly from face-to-face consultations to telephone or digital advice as a first step. As the pandemic eases, signs of public frustration...

Climate change is a global health emergency. What can we learn from how ‘green’ has gone up the agenda? And how might we apply useful lessons to getting further improvements in another complex and difficult challenge – improving the health of the UK population and reducing inequalities?     The increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms is already devastating live...

Being chief executive of the NHS is one of the most challenging jobs in the country.     Since the role started in 1985 there have been nine postholders, with Amanda Pritchard taking over from Sir Simon Stevens this year. Like her predecessors she faces formidable challenges ahead: managing the pandemic’s impact, tackling waiting lists, boosting technology, managing a growing population of older p...

Food is crucial to our health, but it is also a driver of ill health, health inequalities, and damage to the environment.  The second part of the National Food Strategy, led by Henry Dimbleby, was published in July 2021. It is the most comprehensive review of the entire food and drink system in the UK for many years. It recognises the upsides of the food system in providing affordable, convenient...

If you think of health in the UK as a fabric, it is the most threadbare in Glasgow. Here, life expectancy is lowest, and one in four men will die before their sixty-fifth birthday. But even after adjusting for poverty and deprivation, next to comparable deindustrialised cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, Glaswegians have a 30% risk of dying prematurely. That’s from cancer heart disease strok...

It’s easy to forget the state the NHS was in 20 years ago – long waiting lists, heartrending delays in care, winter crises – and heated debate on whether the NHS model was obsolete.   But the Wanless Review set the NHS on course to receive record catch up funding. So in this episode, we ask, given the pandemic and the mounting challenges facing the NHS to deal with a huge backlog of care, is it ti...

The pandemic has created profound challenges for young people over the past year – with education, work, relationships and social time all affected. We also know about the wider economic trends which pile pressure on teens to make it to college to have a better job in the future, and the social trends which might undermine their security as they transition from child to adult. Combined with big ch...

‘Levelling up’ has become an earworm. It featured highly in the Conservative manifesto in 2019, which was referring to improving infrastructure, skills, productivity and economic growth across the country. The idea is to make the UK economy less lop-sided, and less focused on London and the South East.  The aim of ‘levelling up’ has gained even more potency because of the pandemic. For those worki...

The new Biden administration has a lot to deal with in the next four years: the US economy, the environment, public services and infrastructure, and healing America’s cultural and political divisions. Then there's health, inequalities and ensuring the US’s recovery from the pandemic. On health and care alone there’s a long list of wrongs to right, and progress to make. The recent Lancet Commission...

We all need care at some point in our lives – when we’re young, when we’re ill and when we grow older. And caring calls for many of the qualities at the very core of what it is to be human: empathy, compassion, selflessness and commitment. And yet care is so often undervalued, skimped on, commoditised or ignored. Examples of that indifference are everywhere: at home, in the NHS and in social care....

Life expectancy is a key indicator of our health and wellbeing. Across most OECD countries in the last ten years, life expectancy has been stalling – and stalling most in the US and the UK. Last March, Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two distinguished economists from Princeton University, published what became the must-read book of the year. That book was called Deaths of Despair and the Fu...

What happens when the emergency phase of COVID is over? Has the pandemic set health and social care on a new course or will most things snap back to the way they were before?  In a global emergency we have to deal with the short term first, but what’s the long-term path for the NHS in particular? And what are the deeper threats and opportunities we should be thinking about? In this episode, our Ch...

Obesity in the UK is on the up. Prevalence of obesity is higher in more deprived communities, and obesity is linked to a range of health conditions – as well as increasing a person’s risk from COVID-19.   Evidence tells us that communities, government policies, commercial influences, and many other factors shape our ability to be healthy – but people often think it’s up to individuals to manage th...

The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP talks to Health Foundation chief executive Dr Jennifer Dixon about his tenure as the longest-serving health secretary. They are joined by award-winning author Nicholas Timmins, writer of the Health Foundation book, Glaziers and window breakers , which includes interviews with 11 former health secretaries together with original analysis. A new edition of the book, featurin...