Funding to prevent ill health throughout the life course

The October 2024 Budget will raise concerns among health visitors and school nurses about the effect on their services and the communities they serve. The King's Fund (2024) has provided a helpful summary of the potential impact on health and social care services.

The concern from all public health services has arisen because there was no reference to increasing the public health grant or the wider public health budgets. Given that ‘prevention’ is one of the three areas that the Darzi report highlighted for investment in the NHS, this could be viewed as an omission (Department of Health and Social Care [DHSC], 2024).

Lord Ara Darzi was tasked with undertaking a rapid review of the evidence to assist with diagnosing the major challenges for the NHS and identifying the priority areas for action. These are given in the report as: Community (from hospital care to community care), Digital (from analogue to digital) and Prevention (from sickness to prevention).