{"id":46290,"date":"2019-12-16T12:55:39","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T11:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=46290"},"modified":"2019-12-30T16:13:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T15:13:31","slug":"there-is-no-time-for-recrimination-our-duty-is-to-protect-and-improve-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2019\/12\/16\/there-is-no-time-for-recrimination-our-duty-is-to-protect-and-improve-health\/","title":{"rendered":"There is no time for recrimination\u2014our duty is to protect and improve health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">My personal and professional beliefs have been seriously challenged by the outcome of the UK General Election 2019. Large swathes of England, where Brexit<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and continuing austerity<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">will cause the most pain, voted to \u201c<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Get Brexit done<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u201d The evidence <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/betterhealthforall.org\/2019\/07\/30\/past-presidents-end-of-term-report-part-2-the-health-of-the-public\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">over 10 years of austerity policies in the UK, is overwhelming<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u2014<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">life expectancy has gone down, particularly for women in poor areas, and infant mortality has increased. With some irony, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/guce.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/copyConsent?sessionId=3_cc-session_8999b971-c627-4932-8023-8bf5177dd86c&amp;inline=false&amp;lang=en-gb\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">food banks received a boost in donations<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the wake of the election, at the same time that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/business\/news\/wetherspoons-boss-tim-martin-wealth-general-election-result-a9245926.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">stock holders were enjoying a further boost in their personal wealth.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Inequalities in income, and in health, increased overnight.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Other observers outside the UK can enjoy the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/politik\/ausland\/grossbritannien-wahl-boris-johnson-hat-alle-gegner-besiegt-kommentar-a-1301152.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">schadenfreude headlines like Der Spiegel<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Die G\u00e4nse haben f\u00fcr Weihnachten gestimmt<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u2014\u201d<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The turkeys have voted for Christmas.\u201d <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, in the health service, and in the public health community particularly, there is no time for recrimination, or navel gazing. It isn\u2019t the first time that a group of people or politicians have ignored the overwhelming evidence<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u2014<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">just think about decades of tobacco control efforts. Our duty is to protect and improve health.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have to rebuild from the grass roots and understand and build on community assets. We must build robust community campaigns and organisations. People need to start recognising who is making their lives more difficult, who is profiting from their misery, and who is distorting their understanding of how the world works. American community organisations have understood this for many years with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2017\/jul\/23\/trump-resistance-one-adjective-female-womens-march\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">grassroots resistance trying to prevent excesses from presidential power<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We need to understand health rights as real and tangible, not theoretical and aspirational. These rights can and are tested in courts of law. For example, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/357\/bmj.j2013.full.print\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">our right to health<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was more important than the tobacco industry\u2019s right to intellectual property in the plain packaging ruling in the High Court.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We need to empower cross-party political coalitions based on the things we all want, especially around protecting the NHS.\u00a0 We need politicians to lobby strongly for policies which <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/367\/bmj.l6503#;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">unite us more than divide us<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and put <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/367\/bmj.l6503\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">health, wellbeing and care at the top of the political agenda<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Boris Johnson can be part of those solutions too by ending austerity, bringing forward <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.campaigncc.org\/sites\/data\/files\/Docs\/one_million_climate_jobs_2014.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the green new deal<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and helping the UK achieve net zero carbon before 2050. He could <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ippr.org\/files\/2019-05\/social-care-free-at-the-point-of-need-may-19.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">fund free social care<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, perhaps using a bit of that \u00a334 billion promised for the NHS. Properly funded social care will relieve NHS winter pressures. And he could reinstate public health budgets, which provide a much <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/jech.bmj.com\/content\/71\/8\/827\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">better return on investment<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> than treatment interventions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we are to protect our health and wellbeing, we must also address the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cjr.org\/podcast\/podcast-cadwalladr-disinformation-brexit-trump-2020.php\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> misinformation that is spread through social media<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> advertising, which generates fake and diversionary news. We are increasingly aware of the perverse influence of unedited and uncontrolled <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/bmj\/365\/bmj.l2144.full.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">social media in stories about <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">vaccines, e-cigarettes, and other areas of our work. Disinformation was widespread in the UK election campaign, and is likely to be even more so in USA 2020.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/dec\/13\/fight-back-recrimination-blame\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a column in The Guardian, <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">George Monbiot also asks we support charitable work, because it will be needed even more as social welfare disappears. This is now the reality. Food banks are not going to decline for many years to come. As a member of the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fabians.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Hungry-for-Change-web-27.10.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fabians Food and Poverty commission<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I believed that food banks were a failure of policy and a necessary, but\u00a0 temporary response to the evils of austerity and changes of universal credit. Now I must accept the existence of food banks, donate to them, support them. I hope they become a focus of discontent, a place of subversion and a spark for rebellion against the cruel policies of austerity. Volunteering and supporting Citizens Advice bureaus, and legal rights organisations is another natural route for health professionals to offer their knowledge and support.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are some protections we must pursue at a national and international level. The UK Faculty of Public Health campaigned <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fph.org.uk\/media\/1778\/brexit-booklet-digital-2.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">to secure our involvement in the European Centre for\u00a0 Disease Prevention and control (ECDC),<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/362\/bmj.k4003\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the Lisbon drugs monitoring agency<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> which were part of Theresa May\u2019s unsuccessful EU Withdrawal Bill.\u00a0 The UK must remain part of these public health agencies. It is a shame that we can\u2019t guarantee our involvement in the European Environment agency or the Food Standards agency, but we should still try.\u00a0 We also need to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fph.org.uk\/media\/1897\/fph-do-no-harm-guidance-final.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">secure the \u201cdo no harm\u201d provisions of the Lisbon treaty for future protection of public health<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. This, in turn, informs our vigilance on <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fph.org.uk\/media\/2444\/a-blueprint-for-a-public-health-approach-to-post-brexit-trade-negotiations.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">trade agreements to ensure the maximum possible protection of health,<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> environment, and social rights.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The health community must avoid recrimination and steer towards a vision of better health, more caring communities and a better environment locally and for the planet.\u00a0 We should not be swayed from our commitment to respecting all of our citizens equally and must challenge discrimination, prejudice, or violence against minorities. We must <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2019\/mar\/15\/its-our-time-to-rise-up-youth-climate-strikes-held-in-100-countries\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">advocate for, and with, young people<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, to secure <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/gov.wales\/sites\/default\/files\/publications\/2019-06\/easy-read-a-guide-to-the-wellbeing-of-future-generations-act.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the wellbeing of future generations. <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>John Middleton<\/strong>, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">President, Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Competing interests<\/strong>: None declared.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My personal and professional beliefs have been seriously challenged by the outcome of the UK General Election 2019. Large swathes of England, where Brexit and continuing austerity will cause the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2019\/12\/16\/there-is-no-time-for-recrimination-our-duty-is-to-protect-and-improve-health\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14774,236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brexit","category-nhs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>There is no time for recrimination\u2014our duty is to protect and improve health - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2019\/12\/16\/there-is-no-time-for-recrimination-our-duty-is-to-protect-and-improve-health\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"There is no time for recrimination\u2014our duty is to protect and improve health - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My personal and professional beliefs have been seriously challenged by the outcome of the UK General Election 2019. 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