Improve health in the North of England and prosperity will follow

A study published last year which showed that Northerners die much younger than their Southern neighbours prompted a few predictable headlines of outrage, and then fizzled away without any policy follow-ups.

But new research out this week which demonstrates for the first time that the North of England’s poorer health can be directly linked to the region’s poorer wealth is so startling that only the most cynical would be able to ignore its findings.

More pertinently, the research shows that tackling the ill-health of those who live in the North could generate an extra £13.2bn for the economy. Even relatively small decreases in the rates of ill health and mortality could reduce the gap in GVA – Gross Value Added – per head between the North and the rest of England by 10%.

These are big and significant findings, and were brought to my attention by my son, Dr Hakim Yadi, who is chief executive of the Northern Health Science Alliance, a grouping of universities, hospitals and AHSNs across the North of England. He commissioned the research precisely because he wanted to discover whether there was a causal relationship between the North’s poorer health, and its poorer productivity because, as he explains: “People have been aware of the health inequality between the North and South for decades. But no one had ever asked the question before as to whether these poorer levels of health were leading to poorer levels of productivity. We were astonished that the link between the two was so great.”

The result is Health for Wealth: Building a Healthier Northern Powerhouse for UK Productivity. The research was carried out by the North’s six great universities at Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield, York, Liverpool and Lancaster.

What’s more, the research has come up with some astonishingly precise numbers on productivity gains. By improving health in the North, the authors reckon that the £4 gap in productivity per-person per-hour between the Northern Powerhouse and the rest of England could be cut by 30% or £1.20 per-person per-hour.

Professor Clare Bambra, the report’s lead author, adds that: “If you improve health in the North you will improve its productivity – potentially benefiting the whole of the UK’s economy.” Professor Bambra added that as well as additional funding, more work needs to be done to improve labour market participation and job retention among people with a health condition in the region.

The research also showed that workers with ill health in the North are 39% more likely to lose their job than a similar individual in the rest of England and that when these workers with ill health do return to work, their wages are 66% lower than a similar individual in the rest of England.

Unsurprisingly, these findings are already causing quite a stir. For the first time, politicians, policy-makers, business leaders and health specialists can now see for themselves what was always self-evident: that health and wealth go hand in hand. They should get together for the first time and set in motion immediate action to improve this health gap.

They will be pleased to know too that not all of the report’s recommendations cost money. The changes required are subtler than that but require as much joined up thinking as they do hard cash. For starters, health can be improved by business leaders paying more attention to the health of their employees in the workplace with actions that don’t cost that much: gyms, regular health checks and so forth.

As the report suggests, local enterprise partnerships, local authorities and devolved Northern regions should scale-up their place-based public health programmes across the population by promoting better health.

Of course, more money would help, used wisely, and the report also calls for an increase in NHS funding in the North. You can see why: a 1% increase in NHS spending per-head could increase the median weekly wage by £44 in the Northern Powerhouse compared to £26 in the rest of England. That’s a huge increase.

It’s no wonder that both Newcastle city council leader, Nick Forbes, and Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, welcomed the research, calling for greater health devolution for the region, as well as an end to cuts in public health budgets. They said: “The findings today show beyond any doubt that the North must be handed the tools to take charge. We cannot continue to wait for Government to notice the stark reality of health outcomes in the North.”

“We know that poor mental and physical health often prevent people from reaching their potential, with a knock-on effect on our businesses and productivity; this report proves why addressing this has to be a key Northern devolution demand in future.”

Interesting that when you put health and wealth together, people finally start to sit up and take note. With Brexit looming, pumping more resources and granting greater devolution over health services to the North is something that no government nor business leader can ignore.