Health inequalities: What can we learn from Manchester’s approach?

Children born in 2008 in the UK have not yet hit their 18th birthday but have already lived through a global financial crisis, a period of austerity, a pandemic, and now a cost-of-living crisis. Inequality has widened in that time, and local authority budgets have been dramatically cut.

Before last year’s election the Labour Party set out its health mission, where it acknowledged that much of what made people healthy sat outside the remit of the NHS. It set out plans for jobs, housing, and policies around unhealthy food, alcohol, and tobacco.1 But with a laser focus on fiscal policy, many public health experts believe that the government is simply not being ambitious enough.

Since gaining power the Labour government has announced a ban later this year on TV advertising of unhealthy food before the 9 pm watershed,2 as well as £125m for trailblazer programmes to help people with long term chronic conditions to get back to work.3 Yet a planned overhaul of welfare has been heavily criticised after figures showed that it will push more children into poverty.4

The NHS will shift its focus from sickness to prevention, the government has said. But with health service finances in a dire state, NHS England is set to be abolished5 and steep redundancies made at integrated care boards.6

It was against this background that public health professionals met in March at the UK Health Security Agency’s annual conference. …