A UK Charter for Health

Dear PoHG supporter

A UK Charter for Health

During this election campaign the NHS and its financial cost are quite rightly of enormous significance. People clearly care about the principles on which the NHS is founded – fairness, equity and public provision. It’s time to broaden the debate and apply those principles to the wider social and economic causes of ill health.

Now we have a tool with which you can work to get health equity onto the political agenda during this final week of the election campaign. We are attaching the UK Charter for Health, developed by PoHG, The Equality Trust and Birmingham City University over the last twelve months. Please use it to ask your local candidates to support the goals of this charter and compare their party's manifesto proposals to the policy suggestions in Figure 1.

It is only by shifting policy upstream towards prevention of illness and promotion of health that the financial cost of treatment through the NHS will be brought under control.

But don’t stop when the election is over! Please promote the charter amongst your networks and colleagues – put it up in your workplace, talk about it with your friends and fellow workers, press your local health authorities and councils to adopt it. For our part PoHG will continue to refine, develop and promote the charter nationally.

With best wishes

Sue Laughlin and Alex Scott-Samuel
(Co-chairs of PoHG)

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