The Five Health Frontiers: A New Radical Blueprint

'A brilliant exposé' - Danny Dorling

Covid-19 has exposed the limits of a neoliberal public health orthodoxy. But instead of imagining radical change, the left is stuck in a rearguard action focused on defending the NHS from the wrecking ball of privatization.

Public health expert Christopher Thomas argues that we must emerge from Covid-19 on the offensive - with a bold, new vision for our health and care. He maps out five new frontiers for public health and imagines how we can move beyond safeguarding what we have to a radical expansion of the principles put forward by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, over 70 years ago.

Beyond recalibrating our approach to healthcare services, his blueprint includes a fundamental redesign of our economy through Public Health Net Zero; a bold new universal public health service fit to address the real causes of ill health; and a major recalibration in the efforts against the epidemiological reality of an era of pandemics.

Christopher Thomas is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, where he leads on health and care. He is co-editor of Progressive Review, a journal of ideas and politics. He regularly comments on health and care issues in print and broadcast media, and regularly writes in the Independent and the Times. Before working at IPPR, he led on public health and inequality at major charities including Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK.