Abstract

KEY MESSAGES
● A decade of austerity, stalled mortality trends, widening health inequalities and climate change present profound health challenges that predate the pandemic.
● The pandemic has shown that population health in the UK is insecure, and we now face additional challenges from ongoing COVID-19 disease, unmet health and social care need, and the consequences of pandemic-related social and economic disruption.
● A radical shift in the government’s approach to population health is needed. This requires integrating three elements: equity, health in all policies, and a shift to a wellbeing economy.

Rights

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

Cite as

McCartney, G., Douglas, M., Taulbut, M., Katikireddi, S. & McKee, M. 2021, 'Addressing the population health challenges as we build back from the pandemic', BMJ, 375, article no: e066232. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-066232

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Last updated: 16 June 2022
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