Member News
17th February 2012Looking at health inequalities, MEND asks whether the government's reforms and cuts to the NHS will do more harm than good.
This week saw the second anniversary of the Marmot Review and the release of two year follow on data on the state of health inequalities in England. The data showed that the gap between the social determinants of health of England's rich and poor continues to widen, leaving us fairing worse than most of our European neighbours. The government, to its credit, has built its public health reforms around Marmot's health inequalities agenda, and in all fairness the impact that these reforms will have in the long term is yet to be seen. Yet the release of these figures prompts one to think about whether the government's reforms and cuts are doing more harm than good.
As the Guardian quoted Sir Marmot, service cuts have a selective impact the further down the social hierarchy you go. This is extremely worrying if we believe the findings of the report published last month by the Health Select Committee. The committee found that many NHS organisations are "salami-slicing" services to make short term savings rather than finding sustainable efficiency savings through redesigning the way that services are delivered. Most worryingly, the committee found that it is services at the margins rather than the core spend which are being cut in this way. MEND is concerned that child weight management programmes among other services are being cut in this way and urges the government to take immediate action to address these issues.
The figures continue to show the importance of early childhood. With one in three children being classed as overweight or obese by the time they reach secondary school, it is vital that service provision does not suffer in the face of these cuts and in the organisational inertia of the transition, particularly in England's most deprived areas, if we are to reduce health inequalities. With regards to the reforms themselves, getting the details right around funding distribution, priority setting by Health and Wellbeing Boards, and the operation of the health premium will be crucial to ensuring local authorities in the poorest areas do not suffer as they take on the £2.2bn budget for public health.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd