Working on health creation and virtuous circles

Since I attained working age, I have only ever been unemployed once. Indeed, there were periods in my life where I held down two or even three jobs at the same time. However, for a couple of months, I found myself in-between jobs with no notion of what I wanted to do next. During this time, purely to get my National Insurance stamp paid, I registered as being unemployed. This was in the days where you went along to the ‘Job Centre’ answered some questions over your eligibility for various benefits, and importantly, looked at the row after row of little cards each advertising jobs; none of which appealed.

It was a strange time in my life. I needed something to do, but working in a warehouse, a shop or as a salesman wasn’t ever going to cut it. I had an MBA for goodness’ sake. I had just left the NHS and although a qualified nurse, I also didn’t want to go back into nursing practice. I wanted to go into education. Fortunately, I was able to do so and enjoyed a later-life second career in higher education. I went from being a Lecturer to Dean of Faculty. I have long retired now and what I do these days, I do because I want to, not because I need to. In that regard I know I’m fortunate. Many others aren’t.

The IPPR thinktank estimates that Britian has lost 900,000 people from the labour workforce since the pandemic. Not that I’m a great fan of HMRC, but this loss results in £5bn less tax being gathered this year. Less taxes means there is less money to support the public services that we will all use at some stage in our lives: education, defence, health and so on. Interestingly, they also suggest that if were able to improve the nation’s health, we could save the Government £18bn a year in benefit cost.

So perhaps it was no great surprise that, last week, our new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, announced at the Labour Party Conference, that he was making it a priority to cut waiting lists in those areas, which have the highest number of unemployed people. His focus is on those folk not working as a consequence of ill health. We know that three million people of the estimated nine million people who are economically inactive, are neither employed nor looking for work due to either acute or long-term health problems. It is also worth noting that there are 6.4 million people in England, who are currently on NHS waiting lists for treatment.

I’m not economically inactive. I still pay frustratingly large chunks of my income in taxes each year. That said I probably benefit from being in that ‘baby boomer’ virtuous circle of living through a time of much greater economic prosperity than many folk might experience now. I came of age before the ending of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. It was a time of great technological change too. Things we take for granted now, fridges, TVs, washing machines, cars and even telephones (those attached to a cord at least) all became more readily affordable, and of course more desirable.

However, I think one of the greatest benefits of being a baby boomer were the changes in health promotion, ill health prevention and greater access to health care services when these were needed. Vaccines against polio, measles, whooping cough were all introduced, greatly reducing the occurrence of these diseases in children and young people. As a young person, I remember being excited (as were my class mates) to see if my Mantoux TB test showed positive. I was very naive then. Thankfully I did get to have my BCG vaccination. Compared to the many children and young people I met during the school Covid vaccination programme, most of whom were very knowledgeable as to why it was a good thing to have the vaccination, I was much less clued up at their age!

If I’m somewhat cocooned in my virtuous circle, I think last week Wes was reminding us of those folk who might find themselves in a more vicious circle. Research shows there is a strong link between an individual’s employment status and their health. Unemployment has consistently been shown to be the biggest factor in having a negative impact on a person’s mental health and wellbeing. Anxiety and depression, for example, can very easily reduce someone’s chances of both seeking and securing employment.

People who are unemployed are five times more likely to live with poor health than those in employment. Currently, there are nearly a million job vacancies in England. Helping people caught up in this vicious circle to be able to return to the job market and take up some of these opportunities, makes as much sense to society and it does to the individual. Sadly, I don’t have many ideas as to how we might do this, and unfortunately, I’m not sure Wes has the answers either. I would, however, urge readers to have look at the latest IPPR report on health and prosperity, see here. I like their ambition to change our approach from having a reactive NHS health system to a more proactive health creation approach.