The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh values the report by IPPR authored by Lord Darzi and Dame Sally Davies on Health and Prosperity and believes it should be the beginning of a necessary public conversation in the UK.
College President Prof. Rowan Parks commented:
The ideas expressed in this report show some of the practical steps that need to be taken to achieve the new government’s stated aim of a pivot from a focus on illness to prevention. The historic norm of each successive generation living longer and healthier lives is in danger of being broken. Judging government decisions and actions on whether or not they advance a target of increasing healthy life expectancy is a sound idea, which will focus minds of policy makers on the broader determinants of health.
We also agree with the concept of ‘the health polluter pays’ but are aware that a large driver of the obesity epidemic in children from lower income households is low pay. Whilst this is rightly discussed as a driver of poor mental health in the report, it is also a driver of poor physical health, as the reason many parents feed their children poor quality, unhealthy food is that that is frequently the most affordable option. Taxing those foods to make them more expensive as a standalone measure without support for families to switch to healthier alternatives risks simply leaving children to go hungry. Measures to assist in that need to account not only for the financial cost of healthier, less processed food, but also the time commitment and in some cases the necessary skills to prepare meals using fresh ingredients.