{"id":2561,"date":"2025-01-28T10:52:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T10:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/?p=2561"},"modified":"2025-01-28T10:52:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T10:52:56","slug":"the-re-integration-of-health-in-urban-development-policymaking-is-still-needed-to-shift-from-curative-to-preventative-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/2025\/01\/28\/the-re-integration-of-health-in-urban-development-policymaking-is-still-needed-to-shift-from-curative-to-preventative-policies\/","title":{"rendered":"The re-integration of health in urban development policymaking is still needed to shift from curative to preventative policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Housing and urban environments are critical to public health. Poor conditions worsen inequalities, while healthier spaces prevent disease. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for transformative change in urban development policy, but progress has been stalled by political resistance and focus on housing quantity over quality. To support the shift from treatment to prevention, health must be re-integrated into urban planning and development policies.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Professor\u00a0Nick Pearce<\/a>\u00a0is Director of the\u00a0Institute for Policy Research (IPR)<\/a>\u00a0and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Bath. Dr Geoff Bates<\/a> is a Lecturer in the IPR. Recently they were co-authors for two new papers \u2013 \u2018Why didn\u2019t the \u2018critical juncture\u2019 of the COVID-19 pandemic lead to the re-integration of public health into urban development policy in England?\u2019<\/a> with Prof Sarah Ayres and Dr Andrew Barnfield, and \u2018Are we any closer to tackling health inequalities in England?\u2019<\/a> With Prof Sarah Ayres, Dr Jack Newman, Dr Anna Le Gouais and Dr Rachael McClatchey.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In the pantheons of Labour history, Nye Bevan is remembered as the architect of the NHS. It is sometimes forgotten that as Minister for Health in the post-war Attlee governments, Bevan was also responsible for housing. Conservative wags would joke that Labour only had \u2018Half a Nye on Housing\u2019 and that his overburdened policy portfolio meant that the Labour government failed to give housing the full attention it needed. But the coupling of housing and health in his Ministerial portfolio was a recognition, typical of policymaking for much of the 20th century, that poor public health and inequalities in health and life expectancy were a result of housing conditions. Bevan set out, not just to build council houses and offer them to the whole community, but to improve housing standards to improve the nation\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

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A similar focus on housing and urban development is needed in health policy today. The Labour government has recently announced its plans to reduce NHS waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks for 92% of patients. Understandably, given the significant deterioration in waiting times and the growth of waiting lists over the last decade, policy is focused on the acute sector.\u00a0 But the government is also committed to preventing poor health, and to achieve its objective of shifting from treatment to prevention \u2013 an objective claimed by successive governments \u2013 requires a renewed focus on building healthier places to live. There is now a significant body of evidence<\/a> which shows, not just that poor housing conditions impair physical and mental health, but that urban environments more broadly are critical determinants of health outcomes.<\/p>\n

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Poverty and deprivation are concentrated in cities and so action to tackle the social determinants of health is a necessary part of any health prevention strategy. Beyond this broad focus on the reduction of poverty and inequality, however, there are distinct challenges for improving public health in cities and urban environments. In his latest annual report<\/a> the government\u2019s Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, sets out four of these:<\/p>\n

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