The PHI UK Local Health and Global Profits (LHGP) research consortium has outlined five key priorities in response to the NHS’s call for input from health and care organisations to help shape a transformative 10-Year Health Plan for England.
Professor Anna Gilmore at the Department of Public Health; Director and Principle Investigator of LHGP and Co-Director Centre for 21st Century Public Health, University of Bath said:
the NHS will be unsustainable unless we invest significantly in prevention. As part of this we need to urgently recognise and address the harm caused by commercial products. Currently corporations make excess profits from that harm and we as taxpayers are picking up the costs, meaning corporations have no incentive to change. That needs to change.
The LHGP consortium highlights the urgent need to strengthen prevention efforts by addressing systemic drivers of preventable illnesses and inequality through sustainable actions. The new NHS 10-Year Health Plan offers a chance to build a sustainable healthcare system in England.
LHGP has recommended five key priorities they believe should be central to the new health plan:
Focusing on Prevention: Implement structural, population-level regulations to tackle the commercial determinants of health.
Embedding Health in All Policies: Ensure health considerations are integrated across government policies.
Transparent Governance: Establish accountable and transparent structures to protect public health interests.
Statutory Regulation Over Self-Regulation: Prioritise robust statutory regulations over voluntary codes, self-regulation, or partnership approaches.
Leading by Example: Empower public institutions to model best practices and invest in thriving communities.
The consortium is a coalition of leading researchers from the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Sheffield, and LSHTM is dedicated to promoting population health through addressing the Commercial Determinants of Health at local level.
For media queries, please contact: Adriaan Taljaard alt87@bath.ac.uk
You can contribute your voice to the 10-Year Health Plan here.