The prevention green paper: blink and you’ll miss it

On a Monday night in July, shortly before Boris Johnson became our new prime minister, the government released its much anticipated green paper on prevention. This was done with no fanfare; not even a press release.

Published amid reports of a row between the health secretary Matt Hancock and outgoing prime minister Theresa May, it’s probably unsurprising that the paper lacks ambition.

Matt Hancock’s original prevention vision took aim at the Ageing Society Grand Challenge mission—five years of additional healthy life expectancy by 2035 while narrowing inequalities. This mission was published at a time of unprecedented stalling in healthy life expectancy and widening of health inequalities, and the green paper now sensibly admits that it “will not deliver the whole …