Better Health For All

By Professor Simon Capewell, FPH Vice President of Policy 

Next week, voters across the country will head to the polls to determine the make-up of the next Government. The outcome may be uncertain, but this much is clear: we cannot allow the public’s health to be side-lined over the course of the next Parliament. At FPH, we are committed to ensuring that policy-makers embed health in all policies. Following the announcement of the snap-election, we therefore rapidly produced our short-list of priorities for the next Government. They are:

1) Realising Brexit’s ‘health dividend’
2) Shoring up and increasing public health funding
3) Making sure the specialist public health workforce is adequately staffed and supported

We’re doing all we can nationally to advocate for these issues. But we cannot do it alone.  We need your help to deliver our message to your local parliamentary candidates and get them to commit to our asks. As an FPH member, you are well-placed to do this because Parliamentary candidates are much more likely to listen to the concerns of their constituents- especially when those concerns are presented against the backdrop of local data or case-studies- than they are to national organisations with no concrete links to their community.

Over the next week or so, candidates will be in a mad dash to meet as many of their constituents as they can. What they hear on your doorstep or at a hustings in your community may follow them into the House of Commons. To help you get started, we produced this brief one page guide outlining how you can campaign on behalf of FPH. It includes sample questions to ask, opportunities to take advantage of, and tips for building relationships with your candidates.

Make sure you also visit our General Election webpage to access all of our resources (including our Start Well, Live Better manifesto) to help you campaign and to see the election ‘asks’ from our allied organisations and partners.

Finally, we want to hear from you! Your feedback is invaluable to us. If you do speak to any of your candidates, we would love to hear how it went. Or, if you need help in reaching out to them, please feel free to email FPH’s policy team (policy@fph.org.uk) for some advice and guidance. We want to help as many members as possible build and maintain relationships with their candidates, both in the run up to election and, crucially, with the next government. Thank you for your continued support.