Climbing ladders: From treatment to prevention (2025)

Prevention has many different meanings. In this report, we use the term prevention, to mean the actions that help people remain in the best state of health and wellbeing for them, tackling the avoidable inequalities that undermine this, and therefore attempting to stop lives being cut short. Prevention refers to helping people to live longer and healthier lives by reducing the chance of illness in the first place and preventing the progression of symptoms once people become ill. ⁶Prevention is important because, as described earlier, many causes of ill health are preventable, and many deaths are deemed avoidable.⁷

We must recognise that avoidable mortality and illness are not evenly distributed throughout the UK or Gateshead, communities living with inequalities are disproportionately affected. Our poorest communities are facing not only shorter lives but also spending more of those years in poor health. This means that prevention is not only a strategy for health and wellbeing, but essential in social and economic prosperity. Interventions across the life course create cumulative benefits, reduce demand on acute services, and improve productivity.

By using Sir Michael Marmot's principles to reduce inequalities, ⁸and applying approaches like the Building Blocks of Health,⁹ we can create a framework for prevention and fairness. This allows us to rethink how we can prevent ill health occurring and progressing, while creating the opportunity to re balance the inequality between treatment and prevention. Prevention is fundamental to enabling the NHS 10-year plan's ambition to pivot from hospital to community, and from treatment to prevention. Applied at scale this will provide concrete and measurable benefits to the residents of Gateshead.