Poverty and Health Inequalities – What Can We Do?

Last week the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, came up to Lancashire. He spent the morning in Blackpool and then came over to see us in Morecambe Bay for the afternoon. It was an absolute pleasure to meet him and to welcome him here. He came to listen – the mark a genuinely kind and caring leader. More importantly he came to listen to people who live in these Northern Coastal Communities, to really hear what life is like and to allow that to impact his thinking and he prepares to develop further strategy on tackling poverty and health inequalities. As an epidemiologist, he is grounded in data and understands the issues at hand. What I really valued was his humanity and humility as he listened to the stories of people who live and work here.

 

Last year, the Home Secretary, Pritti Patel also visited Morecambe Bay. She came to Barrow-in-Furness and spent some time at The Well, a CIC which works with people in recovery from addiction and of which I am a Director. In an interview afterwards, she was asked about the impact of Austerity and the reality of poverty in communities like ours (4 in 10 children in Barrow grow up in poverty). Her answer was that poverty is not the (sole) responsibility of government. I put sole in brackets, because she tried to insinuate that the role of central government in tackling poverty that exists in local areas is very minimal compared to the responsibility of local government (who have had their funding massively cut by central government in the last 10 years), local schools, local public services and local businesses. I’ve really wrestled with what she said since that time because she’s not altogether wrong! But nor is she right! Of course Central Government has a huge role to play in tackling poverty. It’s undeniable that national policy, economic strategy, including taxation, land ownership and business development all have massive implications. But poverty doesn’t only exist because of Central Government. Health Inequalities do not just exist because of Central Government. I am not for one minute, negating or diminishing their role, but we do have to all ask ourselves why we see and tolerate such inequality and what we can all do to change this narrative. Because as Michael Marmot reminds us so powerfully in his book ‘The Health Gap’ – none of this is inevitable and it certainly doesn’t have to continue. Marmot holds that “if you want to understand why health is distributed the way it is, you have to understand society.” So if we want to understand society, then as Prof Bev Skeggs (Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University) so eloquently says: “Society is shaped by our values and what we value“.

 

If we are serious about ‘levelling up’, ‘resetting’ and tackling age old health inequalities then we have to understand that this is both complex, but also entirely possible and need not take 100 years! As Marmot says in his amazing book ‘The Health Gap’ – essential reading for anyone who cares about this issue – we must do something and we must do it now! Marmot’s research proves that health inequalities are not a footnote to the health problems we face, they are the major health problem. We can actually make significant and measurable differences in a short space of time – so why aren’t we doing more? In the rest of this blog I hope to look at how we can make a real difference to poverty and health inequalities in our communities. We all have a part to play, no matter who we are. This is absolutely an issue for central and local government, but it is also an issue for society as a whole in all its facets.

 

Prof Imogen Tyler has written a phenomenal book called ‘Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality’. It is, in my opinion, the most important book published this year (I know that sounds like an overstatement, but it isn’t!). I believe this must be our starting point when we talk about poverty and health inequality. If we don’t understand how we have all subconsciously and/or overtly accepted a narrative that ‘the poor are feckless and lazy and could just pull themselves up by their boot straps if they wanted to, because we all have the same opportunities,’ then we are blind to the reality of the stigma that surrounds poverty and how it is weaponised to maintain the status quo. The thing is – it’s not just the government who have used this narrative – it’s part of British culture. So many of our comedy programmes ridicule and scapegoat the poorest in our society – The Harry Enfield Show (‘The Slobs’), and Little Britain (Vicky Pollard) to name just two. think of how many reality TV shows, like ‘Benefits Street’ have reinforced the stereotypes. Our national press continue to bombard us with very particular perspectives on ‘benefits scroungers‘ and ‘migrant swarms‘ and we read it, we drink it in, and whether we like it or not, it embeds itself as a way of thinking in our minds. That’s how propaganda works. It creates a corporate mindset by ‘othering’ our fellow human beings and pitting us against one another, rather than bringing us together to collaboratively find solutions in a way that works for everyone.  It takes significant and sustained effort to do our own internal work around stigma, racism, white privilege, sexism and toxic masculinity. But if we want to build a society shaped by our values and what we really value then whoever we are – this is where we must begin. Our first work is to demolish the strongholds in our minds, challenge our unconscious biases and undo our ‘go to’ narratives, replacing them with deeper and better truths about the innate value in every human life. We must be determined to create the kind of language which reflects this because language gives substance to our thoughts and beliefs. This important work needs to weave its way through every part of our education system. This will take effect in shifting the corporate mindset through the way we teach history in our schools, for example, with a more honest appraisal of the negative effects of colonialism, or indeed how the feudal system continues to dominate the price of land and the unaffordability of good quality housing. We need to equip the rising generation with the tools they will need to undo the damaging ideologies of stigma and find solutions to the issues they are facing around social justice and climate change.

 

Imogen draws on the work of The Poverty Truth Commission, here in Morecambe Bay and in other places to highlight ways in which we can break down stigma, build friendships and create a kinder society. The Poverty Truth Commission gives us a real insight not only into how we break down stigma, but how the building of friendships across the dividing walls in our society creates a new political space from which we can create ‘the good life’ together. Our political systems have become far too removed from every day life and we need a radical shift from disengagement to much wider participation in community life and decision making. There are so many voices calling for this from all sides of the political spectrum. We so badly need to break out of our entrenched twitter-siloed positions and learn to curate the space for a more collaborative and co-operative form of political and economic conversation and prioritisation. It is, in my view, impossible to think about breaking down health inequalities without involving those who experience them most severely to be a part of finding the solutions. For further reading on this: Radical Help by Hilary Cottam, Rekindling Democracy by Cormac Russell and Greed is Dead: Politics After Individualism by Paul Collier and John Kay are all vital texts. This requires a much more local, devolved, participatory kind of politics – the kind of thing made possible through initiatives like ‘The Art of Hosting’, ‘Citizens Jurys’ and ‘People’s Assemblies’ underpinned by principles of love and kindness. In this way we can create much more realistic ‘deals’ (like the one in Wigan) between public sector organisations and people in our communities. This might all sound a bit wishy washy, but as Marmot demonstrates, “the lower people are in the socio-economic hierarchy, the less control people have over their lives.’ He argues that “tackling disempowerment is crucial for improving health and improving health equity” This is where the circular arguments about absolute or relative poverty are missing the point. When Philip Hammond stated as Chancellor of the Exchequer that he ‘doesn’t see poverty in the UK‘ – he was talking about absolute poverty and implying it isn’t an issue in the UK. He’s profoundly wrong. Economist Amartya Sen helps us understand this: “Relative inequality with respect to income translates into absolute inequality in capabilities: your freedom to be and do. It is not only how much money you have that matters for your health, but what you can do with what you have; which in turn, will be influenced by where you are.” Marmot argues that this means people in this position cannot participate in society with dignity. It is this active participation in ones own life and the life of the community around you, coupled with a sense that you can be part of the change that needs to happen which underpins the strap line for the poverty truth commission. “Nothing about us, without us, is for us.” If we want to tackle poverty and health inequalities in our society we have to radically include those who are currently most marginalised to be part of the change with us. We’re not trying to fix them. Together, we are trying to untangle the injustice that allows this kind of staggering inequality to continue.

 

The NHS is currently exploring its own role in tackling poverty and health inequalities. As the biggest employer in the country it has the opportunity to make a massive difference as an Anchor Institution, setting a good example and creating a network, both locally and nationally for other partners to collaborate with. Along with other local employers it can make a vast difference through positive employment schemes for people from poorer communities, paying a living wage, procuring locally and developing apprenticeship schemes, to name just a few ideas. We have developed a charter in Lancashire and South Cumbria, which we hope will be nationally available soon. I’ve previously written on the role of Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and how taking a ‘radical help’ approach with our communities could make a real difference at a local level. PCNs have a particular role in Population Health Management. This approach that we are focusing on across Lancashire and South Cumbria uses the best in data science and enables health teams to focus in on the areas of greatest need, working with those communities to bring about change through co-creation. If the NHS is really serious about ‘levelling up’, however, one thing which must be explored is the national funding formula. If we’re serious about Population Health, we must be much more comfortable with allocating resources according to Indices of Multiple Deprivation. We must also change what we measure and ensure that Key Performance Indicators and clinical funding streams are much more aligned to this entire agenda. Incentives do change behaviour and we need to make sure that we’re getting them right, whilst permissioning PCNs, in particular, to have a change in focus. We need to make it more attractive to work in areas of higher complexity and create more sustainable models of care. It is my belief that without a Health Inequalities lead at the top table of NHS England and Improvement, the right level of accountability and prioritisation simply won’t be there. It won’t be enough just to have someone accountable in each system, vital though this is. Integrated Care Systems must take an evidence-based approach and recognise what a profound difference they can make in a short space of time. The drivers in the system must be wedded to this way of working. The NHS must stop spending such a colossal amount of money tinkering around the edges of helping people to live a bit longer and get deep into the game of tackling the vast and ongoing health inequalities in our society. It must use it’s powerful voice to continually challenge policies which make this worse and actively campaign to make society more equitable. Marmot and The King’s Fund have already detailed so much that the NHS can do. Olivia Butterworth and Sara Bordoley and their teams are doing some great things. We need more of it! It’s time to act!

 

The issue of land and the lack of affordable housing has a huge effect on people being locked in cycles of poverty and creates massive health inequalities. Central Government has a huge role in sorting this out, but increased devolution may make it become easier with increased public participation in the daily politics of life. Most of the way our land is distributed and inflated was designed in the 11th Century and through the Middle Ages. Alistair Parvin has written the most phenomenal piece on this issue and it deserves time to be read and digested. He makes a very tight case as to why we find ourselves in the situation we are in, but encouragingly he comes up with some really possible, pragmatic and solutions-focused ideas about how we can solve this, if we want to. Of course there are many vested interested and people in positions of significant power, who would resist such an approach, but we must not let that stop us having some grown-up conversations about this. Parvin accepts that it would take a government with extraordinary vision and bravery to do what is really needed and offers some really helpful pragmatic smaller steps that would get us in the right direction.

 

I am not going to copy and paste his paper here, but I hope this whet’s your appetite enough to seriously engage in the possibilities. We can’t keep passing this ball to future generations. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to reset our economy and in this time of ‘jubilee‘ we need to grasp this nettle if we are serious about creating a society that truly works for everyone. Mariana Mazzucato, Kate Raworth, Katherine Trebeck and Carlota Perez are just some of the brilliant people creating the kind of economic and technological frameworks we need. It’s time to build an economy of hope, shaped by our values and focusing on what we value. We know that the UK population would like us to place health and wellbeing at the heart of the UK economy instead of GDP – this is a massive shift and one that we must hold onto. This priority along with the creation of more social co-operatives, new local/community banks and credit unions would all help us to create a fairer economy that really works for the people.

 

 

So, we all have a role to play. As individuals, in our communities, through our work and via a more engaged, participatory, devolved, democracy, we need to deal with stigma and ‘wicked issues’, be determined to be more  switched on, truly engaged and find together some pragmatic solutions fit for the 21st century.  Disengagement is not an option. Let us not miss this moment. We can and we must do something. As Michael Marmot says in the final sentence of ‘The Health Gap’: “Do something. Do it more. Do it better.”

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The Future NHS and Care System – PCNs as Building Blocks

I recently wrote a blog about reimagining health and care in this apocalyptic moment. In this post, I want to put a bit more flesh on the bones of what that might actually look in the context of the NHS, here in the UK and particularly, England.

 

Let me just make a few statements about where I’m at when thinking about future health and care:

I believe in a publicly funded and provided national health and care service, paid for through fair taxation.

I believe that health and care should be available to all people, equally, regardless of ability to pay.

I believe in locally led health and care systems, embedded in local communities.

I believe prevention is better than cure and we need to get up stream and stop people falling in the river in the first place.

I believe creating great working cultures enables teams to flourish and brings out the best in people. I know right now that our health and care workforce is feeling burnt out and overwhelmed. We can’t keep working under the huge burdens of constantly changing goal posts, key performance indicators and heavily mandated targets. The wellbeing of those who work in this sector has been overlooked for too long and the stress levels caused by the sheer pace and volume of work are not acceptable.

I believe there is systemic and ingrained racism in our communities and within the NHS and even though I consider myself to be ‘woke’ about this, as a privileged, white, male, there is still so much work for me and us to do, both internally and externally in order to break the curse of white supremacy. It is simply not enough to say ‘black lives matter’ – our words are cheap unless we do not confront internalised narratives and change society together, from the inside-out through truth and action.

I believe our economic system is no longer fit for the 21st century and am so grateful for the reimagining of what economics is for.

I believe the role of government needs to radically change to be much more empowering of local communities, with appropriate frameworks to support this. We are seeing the mess of centralised control, with unchecked and wasteful investment in the private sector, rather than local community empowerment in this current Covid-19 pandemic.

I believe communities are able to self-organise phenomenally well, as we have seen throughout this pandemic and should be supported to do so more through a much more participatory and relational politics.

I believe that any health and care service should promote overall wellbeing by paying extra special attention to:

 

  • instating women fully and equally
  • prioritising children
  • advocating for the poor and breaking down health inequalities especially through challenging stigma (Very grateful to Imogen Tyler for her great work on this)
  • welcoming ‘strangers’ (by this I particularly mean the way we treat staff from overseas and how we care for refugees and asylum seekers)
  • reintegrating humanity with the environment (e.g. by getting back to basics of nutrition and sustainable food)
  • restoring justice to prisoners (metaphorical and real)
  • healing the sick – through both slow and fast medicine
  • ensure the honouring the elderly In how they are cared for

 

So……(!)……How do we take the best thinking around health and care systems and make it real and practicable in the NHS and Care System? Firstly, I suggest that we need to take the hierarchical, pyramidal system and simply flip it upside down. Let’s begin at the local level, as the foundations stones of a reimagined health and care system and build from there. With this we need to take seriously what Simon Parker is calling for in a rethink of what government exists for.

 

Within the health and care system though, we don’t another fresh reorganisation. We have some good things we can play around with. We just need to stretch our thinking a bit more and permission some creative, entrepreneurial experiments and we can see something really exciting emerge. Primary Care Networks are a good basic building block, which take the best of clinical leadership, and when done properly, combine it with local communities to build local health and wellbeing. They cause General Practice to work together more collaboratively, use the best of available data to map the issues a population are facing and have the flexibility to begin working differently. They are not perfect, and in my opinion, need some adaptation, if they are going to enable the tackling of health inequalities, social injustice and true community empowerment.

 

Firstly, they need more time. The phrase ‘at pace and scale’, used all too often in various management discussions In the health sector, is the antithesis of what the NHS needs right now. PCNs need time to build stronger relationships with their local communities, really listen to what their community are experiencing and build local solutions WITH their communities through co-design and co-creation. The constant onslaught of new targets, new measurement tools, new initiatives, all to be delivered by, well, yesterday, are completely counterproductive to the transition and revolution that community medicine needs to make. The current work load in General Practice is unsafe and unsustainable and is a byproduct of the consumerist attitude we have taken towards healthcare as a commodity. PCNs need time and will fail otherwise! This must be created for them.

 

Secondly, PCNs need to look at alternative and more sustainable models for the future. Currently, PCNs are very much built around General Practice at the core, and this makes alot of sense in many ways. However, here in Morecambe Bay, we have a building block called ‘Integrated Care Communities’ (ICCs), which pre-date PCNs by some five years. I believe we need to see a melding of the best bits of both, with a much wider and more integrated team within and around the PCN model. The traditional GP partnership model, though highly successful and desirable in so many ways, continues to build a model with the GP, primarily as the leader. I am a GP Partner myself – there are some huge benefits to such a model, especially often through great altruism and genuine community care. One of the difficulties facing primary care, as it stands though, is that few ‘future GPs’ want to become partners, preferring a ‘salaried’ approach and the issues facing primary care may, perhaps require a different kind of (and perhaps more socially just) economic model. I suggest that PCNs may want to explore the highly effective and entrepreneurial model of Social Cooperatives. Such models have proved highly successful in places like The Netherlands and New Zealand, provide greater sustainability, better collaborative working and more exciting opportunities. Drawing on the work of the economists, Spencer Thompson, Kate Raworth, Mariana Mazzucato, Katherine Trebeck (and others) I can see that a social co-operative model of PCNs, given trust and freedom to experiment, by either government or commissioners, could really remodel health and care at a local level, around genuine community need, as set out by Hilary Cottam in Radical Help. We could see the creation of locally led (and owned) community health and care services (perhaps even including care homes, who are still very poorly treated as we have seen through this crisis), creating healthy communities from pre-conception to death through asset based community development and participatory, democratic processes. A social cooperative model allows all people working together in a geography to be part of the same ‘system‘, rather than the current clumsiness of multiple ‘sovereign organisations’ tripping over each other, whilst creating similar community roles, bespoke to each employer’s whim. However, a cooperative model may not work for all organisations, like the police and fire-service (I’m happy to be convinced otherwise) and so building relationships, sharing milk and working having regular check-ins and multidisciplinary team meetings will continue to be important.

 

The possibilities at the local level are endless. PCNs would be able to prioritise a much more proactive, preventative model of health and care, employing smaller but more relational and therefore more effective and sustainable teams, embedded in local communities. They would form fantastic partnerships with local schools, co-designing a curriculum that creates positive mental and physical health, connecting young people more into their community and environment whilst being trauma-informed and compassionate in their leadership. Midwives, health visitors, social workers, community Paediatricians and mental health practitioners could form part of the core team and all work from the same geographical space with IT systems that actually talk to each other. Community care of the elderly would be more joined up, with care of the elderly physicians leading their own care of nursing home patients, supported by specialist nurse practitioners, along with, of course the incredible 3rd sector. It might be that some consultants, e.g. Rheumatologists, Dermatologists and Psychiatrists could belong to a cohort of PCNs, even employed by them, and therefore create a greater sense of belonging to a particular set of communities and they would also be able to work with communities more proactively through workshops, group consultations and education settings. Teams could flex and grow to suit the needs of a community, with the economic model set up to enable rather than constrain the flourishing of such initiatives. The social cooperatives could also form community land trusts which could begin to tackle various wider social determinants of poor health, including issues like housing, homelessness and access to green spaces. These cooperatives could ensure a living wage and persuade local businesses to get more involved in the area of health and wellbeing and even invest in the kind of initiatives that would create work in the green sector for local people. Why shouldn’t local health communities be involved in social change, when these issues affect the health of their communities so vastly?

 

I see local leadership teams (what we call Integrated Care Partnerships or ICPs), made up of PCN Directors, Local Government Officials, CVFS CEOs, The Police, Fire Service and Hospital Chiefs continuing to take the role of looking at a wider Population, made up of a group of PCNs and support them in tackling health inequalities, taking a servant leadership approach to empower them to succeed as much as possible. Primarily this group would be about permissioning, enabling, encouraging, holding space for learning and development, holding true to values and using data to facilitate excellence in practice. Relationships and trust will be the core ‘operating framework’ to enable PCNs to fully flourish.

 

The Integrated Care System (ICS) Leaders then need to take a similar approach with each ICP in their domain, giving as much power away as possible and taking a collaborative approach across a wider geography to learn from each other and encourage best practice and through the sharing of stories and success. It’s this kind of nurturing and facilitative leadership that will enable each ICP and PCN to flourish. Hospitals will naturally become more focused on acute care, and areas, like Oncolgy, as consultants become more aligned to the PCNs with which they primarily work (obviously this does not apply to all specialities, which is why an ICS can take more of an overall look at the hospital requirements for the population it serves). The role of the national NHS England and NHS Improvement teams then becomes the servant of all, the enabler and the holder of core values. Rather than a central command and control structure, it gives itself to a love-poured out model, creating cultures of joy right through the health and care system. Yes, it sets some priorities, but does so by listening to what communities around the nation are saying. So right now that would include asking PCNs to prioritise tackling systemic and ingrained racism, health inequalities and childhood trauma, in collaboration with their communities. They will take the best of international experience and learning, share that widely and reimagine the NHS as global trend-setter for how we create deep peace and wellbeing in our communities, enabling us to become good ancestors of the future. A radical, revolutionary but entirely practical refocusing of the NHS and Care System from the bottom-up is entirely possible. There is almost no remodelling needed, simply a change in focus and culture. It requires PCNs and the communities they serve to get on an do it together, disregarding that which prevents them. If they do this, they will find that everything they need will follow them and their light will shine brightly.

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Reimagining Health and Care – An Apocalyptic Moment?

Tweet   There is a ‘kairos moment’ available to us to reimagine how we think about health and care, here in the UK and indeed globally. It’s true that COVID-19 is going to continue to take our attention and shape our health and care services in a particular way for many months ahead. But some [Continue Reading …]

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The NHS as an Anchor Institution

Tweet The Preston Model of economics has set many heads turning and tongues wagging! If you don’t know the story, it is well worth reading about, as it offers much hope for the future. Alternatively, you can hear Cllr Matthew Brown talking about it here.   If the NHS really took on board what it [Continue Reading …]

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