Launch of the IPPR Commission on Health and Prosperity

For too long the UK has seen health as a cost to be contained, rather than the keystone of a fair and prosperous society.

After the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, it’s time to reconsider our approach. The pandemic showed that we can no longer accept the status quo of poor health, rife inequalities and an economic model that fails to ‘price in’ health as an asset.

That's why IPPR has launched a new Commission on Health and Prosperity, to design a new approach to health. The commission will map a new course – one in which health is valued as a fundamental good, but is also understood as an engine of a better, stronger economy. Over the next two years we will deliver a definitive new blueprint for health and prosperity in the UK.

The commission's co-chairs, Lord Ara Darzi and Dame Sally Davies, introduced the commission and shared insights from a launch report, which analysed the UK health context and established what health can offer to the UK’s economic recovery and aspirations for levelling up.

Speakers:

• Professor Dame Sally Davies, Master of Trinity College Cambridge and former Chief Medical Officer
• Professor Lord Ara Darzi, co-Director of the Institute for Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London and former Health Minister
• Marie Gabriel CBE, Chair, NHS Race and Health Observatory
• Sophie Howe, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales
• Chris Thomas, Head of the Commission on Health and Prosperity and Principal Health Fellow, IPPR
• Chair: Carys Roberts, Executive Director, IPPR

Watch the recording of the launch below.

We’d like to thank the NHS Confederation, Lane Clark & Peacock and CF for partnering on the Commission.

We'd also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Commission on Health and Prosperity sponsors: AbbVie, Alzheimer's Society, AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, British Heart Foundation, Gilead, GSK, Impact on Urban Health, Janssen and Siemens Healthineers.