Sustainable healthcare: Practical steps to build back better in the English NHS

Article

Good healthcare is a vital foundation for the future of our country – including the health of its economy and of its democracy.

Given health outcomes were not on a positive trajectory even before the pandemic, it is clear policy must aim higher than simple recovery. Delivering on better health as a people’s priority must mean building back better.

To support this, the Institute for Public Policy Research and Future Health Research have come together to identify immediate learnings from the pandemic. Our ambition has been to understand areas of consensus, where sustainability can be better embedded.

Brilliant care is still possible within our NHS, and the search should be for policies that can help the NHS both universalise and sustain the best care now, for all, in a period of intense global health uncertainty. Our analysis in this report has identified five key areas where sustainability can be strengthened:

  1. thinking differently about investment
  2. narrowing inequalities
  3. ending the postcode innovation lottery
  4. connecting the health service through data and integration
  5. building a sustainable workforce.

Related items

  1. Newcastle street view of famous bridge and buildings

    The evolution of devolution: How the English devolution and community empowerment bill can go further

    The government’s early commitment to broadening and deepening devolution in England is very welcome, but the bill must be bold enough to make change that people can see and feel.
  2. A woman with long dark hair wearing a woolly hat puts her arm around her small son who is holding a teddybear. They're in a community centre in front of boxes of charitable donations

    Making the Child Poverty Strategy work for migrant families

    If we are serious about tackling child poverty, we cannot ignore the children of migrant families.
  3. Two young children run playing underneath a rainbow canopy in a park or garden

    It takes a village: Empowering families and communities to improve children's health

    How can we build the healthiest generation of children ever?