Very early in my time as CEO of ARMA I met Nuzhat Ali, who led on MSK public health at what was then Public Health England. Nuzhat is a tireless champion of the importance of MSK health and its central role in public health. “There’s no health without MSK health” she told the ARMA AGM a few years ago.
Steve Brine MP, Chair of the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee, was recently recently quoted as saying: “If we don’t prevent ill health in this country better than we are, then the NHS in itself is not sustainable and that is a terrifying situation.” I wholeheartedly agree with him, and this is not achievable without a focus on MSK health.
Our ability to do all the things we know will keep us healthy, such as being more active, eating a healthy diet, and living a fulfilling life are inextricably linked to our MSK health. Inequalities in MSK health are well known and impact on the wider health of disadvantaged and underserved populations. A report by Versus Arthritis showed that for people with multiple long-term health conditions, the development of MSK ill health was often the tipping point between managing those other conditions and struggling with them. How many people are trapped in hospital when they are otherwise well enough to leave but cannot manage at home because their MSK conditions make it too difficult for them to manage? How much of the demand for social care would be relieved if we were ageing with better MSK health?
Yet prevention seems to always be low down on the list of priorities. MSK prevention even more so, as we focus on the conditions which kill, on mortality, not morbidity. As Steve Brine so rightly says, if we don’t change this then we cannot get the NHS back to the position we all want to see. So it is great to see the Chair of the Select Committee championing the cause of prevention. It’s great to see the new devolution deal for the North East including plans to develop “a Radical Prevention Fund reshaping existing funding away from acute services and into preventative action”.
Of course, the NHS alone can’t address all the issues that drive our poor health. ICSs, which bring together other key players such as local government and voluntary sector, are in a better position. I challenge them all to follow the lead of North East and North Cumbria and start to focus on what will improve the health of their population. There can be few, if any, areas where MSK is not a big component of this.
We also need a strong lead within Government to address what we know are key contributors to our ill health as a nation – the social determinants of health. Nuzhat has now moved on from her national role, and we need to see a new lead on MSK within the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities who will champion MSK with the same passion that she did. I look forward to working with them, because Nuzhat is right – there is no health without MSK health. And there is no growing economy, no innovation and no high performing NHS without a healthy population.