Health is made at home,
Hospitals are for repairs

Nigel Crisp

Building a healthy and health-creating society

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Health is made at home,
Hospitals are for repairs

Nigel Crisp

The NHS has been fighting for our lives for the last few weeks and months. Throwing all its resources at the COVID-19 pandemic. The millions of health and care workers involved have been magnificent and we must resource them better for the future.

And it’s been up to us, the general public, how far and how fast the virus spreads.  There will still be a vital role for us when this pandemic is over because the NHS can’t by itself deal with many of today’s major health problems such as loneliness, stress, obesity, poverty and addictions. It can only react, doing the repairs but not dealing with the underlying causes.

There are people all over the country who are tackling these causes in their homes, workplaces and communities. People like the Berkshire teachers working with children excluded from school, the unemployed men in Salford improving their community; and the bankers tackling mental health in the City.

They are not just preventing disease but creating health. And they take pressure off the NHS, so it is always there when we need it.

Health is made at home challenges us to set aside our normal assumptions and take off our NHS spectacles to see the world differently and take control of our health. And it calls for a new partnership between the NHS, government and the general public to build a healthy and health creating society.

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ISBN: 9781838031305 Dimensions: 216 x 138 mm Length: 260 pages
Released 29/06/2020
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ISBN: 9781838031312 Length: 260pp
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Nigel Crisp

About the author

Nigel Crisp

Lord Nigel Crisp is an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords where he co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health. He co-chairs Nursing Now, the global campaign on nursing. Chief Executive of the NHS in England from 2000-2006 he now works and writes extensively on global health with a focus on Africa. His main current interests are global health partnerships, health creation and nursing.

Watch the video below to hear Nigel talking to the Royal College of Physicians about the book and 'health creation':

I’ve been a registered nurse for 37 years. I like to think that I’ve helped a few people. But some things I cannot fix. It was only when I started working alongside local people that I discovered that communities can often heal themselves better than I can. I’ve learned that public services are only a small part of the solution. This book is stuffed with great examples of communities collaborating to find better solutions. Trust and relationship-building are the new bandages to promote healing.

Heather Henry, Queens Nurse and Nurse Entrepreneur

It has never been more vital to focus on wellbeing and communities and this important book provides many examples of people doing just that.

Lord Gus O’Donnell, former Cabinet Secretary

No country will have a sustainable health system unless it harnesses all the assets in society at its disposal for health creation.

Mark Britnell, Global Head of Healthcare, Government & Infrastructure at KPMG International

Nigel Crisp has hit the nail on the head. The NHS has for too long had to play the 'social sponge', mopping up the problems of the old and the poor.  Covid-19 has jolted us into a new way of thinking in the way each of us behaves, so that preventing problems, creating our own good health and dismantling poverty become the order of the day, the homeless remain off the streets for good, and we root for the interests of our future generations.

Lord John Bird, Founder of Big Issue

Nigel Crisp is our leading independent thinker on health and global health. In this powerful call to action, he invites us to consider how to renew our collective commitment to the health of the nation, paying particular attention to those who suffered most during the COVID-19 pandemic—our key workers. This is nothing less than a book for our times.

Dr Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of the Lancet

Past publications

SALUS

About the publisher

SALUS is a global media, publishing, research, events and training organisation with a vision to improve human and planetary health by design. Our mission is to create, share and disseminate knowledge concerning the relationship between human health and the natural, built and social environment with a focus on the intersection of science & technology, architecture, lifestyle, urbanism, and sustainable development (SALUS).

We believe that the two great challenges of our age – the need to maintain and improve human health in the face of ageing populations and an epidemic of chronic disease and addressing climate change through a more sustainable management of the earth’s finite resources – are inextricably linked. Healthy people require a healthy planet.

In today’s global knowledge society, the solutions to this huge human and planetary health crisis lie within our grasp, but will require global political will and a wider sense of civic responsibility and corporate social responsibility to embrace collaboratively the social, economic and environmental changes needed.

SALUS aims to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement’s global climate goals by building interdisciplinary professional communities and networks that will facilitate knowledge-led collaborations through a range of media, publishing, research, events and training activities that promote the application and interaction of art, science, culture and innovation.

SALUS are the organisers of the European Healthcare Design Congress, and the Healthy City Design Congress.