18: Time to get tougher on the risk factors fraying our health? – with Professor Kevin Fenton and Richard Sloggett
For the last decade, gains in life expectancy have been stalling. We’re living more years in poor health too, with a 20 year gap in healthy life expectancy between women living in the richest and poorest areas.  The biggest risk factors driving the UK‘s high burden of ill health are smoking, poor diet, physical inactivity and harmful alcohol use. All are socioeconomically patterned and contrib...
37m Apr 04, 2022
37m
17: Tackling the drug problem in the UK and Portugal – with Dame Carol Black and Dr João Castel-Branco Goulão
Like many other countries, the UK has a growing drug problem. In England around 3 million people take drugs and drug deaths are the highest on record at nearly 3,000 a year. In the last decade, heroin-related deaths have more than doubled and cocaine-related deaths have grown fivefold. The situation in Scotland is even worse – now the drug death capital of Europe.   The UK government tackles ...
41m Feb 25, 2022
41m
16: Are businesses and investors really serious about improving our health? – with Catherine Howarth and John Godfrey
Those of us working in health often focus on the government as the main agent to get things done, especially when it comes to public health. But think of all the others out there with power, particularly commercial and investment power.  There are signs that businesses and institutional investors do seem to be getting more interested in health, with some businesses starting to consider their i...
36m Jan 24, 2022
36m
15: That was the year that was: health policy in 2021 – with Lord Victor Adebowale and Hugh Alderwick
In another year shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore some key health policy developments and look ahead to what 2022 might have in store.  With Omicron dominating the headlines and a public inquiry into the handling of COVID-19 on the horizon, has government learned – and acted on – the lessons from the start of the pandemic?   As the NHS faces the huge task of COVID-19 recovery, how w...
38m Dec 18, 2021
38m
14: Are we seeing the decline of general practice, or its rebirth? – with Professor Katherine Checkland, Dr Rebecca Fisher and Shaun Lintern
For years public satisfaction with the NHS has been highest for general practice.  But even before the pandemic, rising workloads and workforce shortages had left many GPs dissatisfied and stressed. Then add a pandemic into the mix, with GPs instructed to move rapidly from face-to-face consultations to telephone or digital advice as a first step. As the pandemic eases, signs of public frustrat...
35m Nov 22, 2021
35m
13: How can the green agenda help the health agenda? – with Dr Fiona Godlee and Professor Andy Haines
Climate change is a global health emergency. What can we learn from how ‘green’ has gone up the agenda? And how might we apply useful lessons to getting further improvements in another complex and difficult challenge – improving the health of the UK population and reducing inequalities?    The increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms is already devastating l...
38m Oct 28, 2021
38m
12: The most challenging job in the country: Being chief executive of the NHS – with Sir Alan Langlands
Being chief executive of the NHS is one of the most challenging jobs in the country.    Since the role started in 1985 there have been nine postholders, with Amanda Pritchard taking over from Sir Simon Stevens this year. Like her predecessors she faces formidable challenges ahead: managing the pandemic’s impact, tackling waiting lists, boosting technology, managing a growing population of olde...
46m Sep 28, 2021
46m
11: We are what we eat: Food, health and inequality – with Anna Taylor and Sarah Hickey
Food is crucial to our health, but it is also a driver of ill health, health inequalities, and damage to the environment.  The second part of the National Food Strategy, led by Henry Dimbleby, was published in July 2021. It is the most comprehensive review of the entire food and drink system in the UK for many years. It recognises the upsides of the food system in providing affordable, conveni...
35m Aug 21, 2021
35m
10: Low life expectancy in Glasgow, and what to do about it – with Dr David Walsh and Sir Harry Burns
If you think of health in the UK as a fabric, it is the most threadbare in Glasgow. Here, life expectancy is lowest, and one in four men will die before their sixty-fifth birthday. But even after adjusting for poverty and deprivation, next to comparable deindustrialised cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, Glaswegians have a 30% risk of dying prematurely. That’s from cancer heart disease s...
36m Jul 22, 2021
36m
9: Is it time for another Wanless Review? – with Anita Charlesworth and Nick Macpherson
It’s easy to forget the state the NHS was in 20 years ago – long waiting lists, heartrending delays in care, winter crises – and heated debate on whether the NHS model was obsolete.   But the Wanless Review set the NHS on course to receive record catch up funding. So in this episode, we ask, given the pandemic and the mounting challenges facing the NHS to deal with a huge backlog of care, is i...
39m Jun 21, 2021
39m
8: Inside the teen mind: what’s happening to mental health? – with Jean Twenge and Yvonne Kelly
The pandemic has created profound challenges for young people over the past year – with education, work, relationships and social time all affected. We also know about the wider economic trends which pile pressure on teens to make it to college to have a better job in the future, and the social trends which might undermine their security as they transition from child to adult. Combined with bi...
35m May 21, 2021
35m
7: Wising up to levelling up – with Professor Diane Coyle and Sir Howard Bernstein
‘Levelling up’ has become an earworm. It featured highly in the Conservative manifesto in 2019, which was referring to improving infrastructure, skills, productivity and economic growth across the country. The idea is to make the UK economy less lop-sided, and less focused on London and the South East.  The aim of ‘levelling up’ has gained even more potency because of the pandemic. For those w...
39m Apr 21, 2021
39m
6: President Biden’s uphill task on US health care – with Dr David Blumenthal and Professor Ashish Jha
What can the Biden administration accomplish on health and health care in the next four years?
34m Mar 22, 2021
34m
5: Do we care enough? – with Madeleine Bunting and Professor Dame Anne Marie Rafferty
We all need care at some point in our lives – yet care is so often undervalued. Why is that? What can be done about it?
32m Feb 22, 2021
32m
4: 'Deaths of despair': A tale of two countries – with Professor Sir Angus Deaton and Sarah O'Connor
Is stalling life expectancy in the US and UK due to the public spending cuts of recent years, or a long-term structural trend? What needs to be done? And might the pandemic accelerate solutions?
33m Jan 22, 2021
33m
3: After the COVID storm: where next for the NHS? – with Nick Timmins and Dame Jackie Daniel
What is the long-term path for the NHS when the emergency phase of COVID is over?  Dr Jennifer Dixon is joined in this episode by Dame Jackie Daniel and Nick Timmins.
31m Dec 22, 2020
31m
2: What should nanny do next? The government and obesity – with Dame Sally Davies, Harry Rutter and James Forsyth
Obesity in the UK is on the up. What should the Government's role be in tackling it?
31m Nov 22, 2020
31m
1: How to be health secretary - Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP and Nick Timmins
What is the role of the health secretary? What should it be, and how does it and should it relate to the management of the NHS? The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP and author Nick Timmins discuss how to be health secretary with Dr Jennifer Dixon, chief executive of the Health Foundation.
36m Oct 21, 2020
36m