Healthy Futures East – a focus on prevention

By Dr Judith Fynn, Healthy Futures East Prevention Workstream Lead, June 2026

There is widespread recognition that the three shifts set out in the 10 Year Health Plan are critical to addressing rising demand on health care services and building a sustainable NHS – a health service ‘fit for the future’. These shifts are:

• Care from hospitals to communities
• Treatment to prevention
• Analogue to digital

Central to these is the aim to address the challenges across the health and care system arising from ageing populations, increasing numbers of people living with long-term and complex health conditions, and widening health inequalities. 

The recent Health Foundation report describes this as a ‘watershed moment’, highlighting a decline in healthy life expectancy between 2011 and 2021 and placing the UK 20th out of 21 high-income countries. Together with the 10 Year Health Plan, it points to the need for a more embedded focus on prevention across health and care.

Prevention is central to a sustainable NHS, and more critically, to building a healthier population. Poor health affects people, their families and communities. It can limit their ability to work and live meaningful lives, while also placing wider pressure on economic, social and environmental wellbeing. 

There is strong evidence that people living in more deprived areas experience lower life expectancy, higher levels of ill health and greater exposure to the wider determinants that increase risks to physical and mental health. The Marmot Review 10 Years On describes a clear social gradient in health, with poorer outcomes linked to deprivation and the social, economic and environmental conditions in which people live.

Achieving long‑term improvements in population health and reducing health inequalities requires a whole-system approach that considers the wider determinants of health: the economic, social and environmental conditions in which people live. Joined-up thinking and action are critical for identifying issues, finding solutions, and bringing about the changes needed. em

These approaches are central to Healthy Futures East, which brings researchers, practitioners and system leaders together, drawing on collective expertise to address local health challenges and improve health outcomes for all.

Our focus on prevention

Prioritising prevention in our current workstream is allowing us to consider the most pressing challenges locally. By collaborating with our partners across the region, we are incorporating their priorities and views into the work we do. 

Within prevention, there may be a different focus for different people and organisations, and particularly for those working in different parts of the health system (see, for example resources by The King's Fund and the World Health Organization). However, these are interlinked, and to achieve the impacts needed to improve population health, a holistic, inclusive approach is critical. This means embracing actions that enable us to shift the dial as far left as possible, supporting the creation of healthy communities and reducing the need for health care.

The prevention workstream focuses on three core themes that underpin our projects:

Building inclusive prevention 

This means tackling inequalities across access and outcomes, both in health care and health determinants. For example, this may include local delivery of interventions, availability of healthy food, clean air, and green spaces. It means understanding how different perspectives can be embedded into decisions, pathways and interventions, so that prevention approaches are shaped around the needs of the population groups most affected by poor health outcomes. 

• Project: Exploring inclusive and equitable decision-making within a CVD prevention pathway: Adopting a systems lens to map decision-making processes within CVD prevention pathways and exploring opportunities for including patient and public voices.

Developing prevention-ready places

This requires whole-system and place-based approaches to understand the changes needed to build systems, environments and communities that allow a focus on prevention. 

• Project: Health Check delivery models, reach and impacts: Working with the Regional Public Health team to explore different delivery models for health checks, and how these may influence reach, access, uptake, and health inequalities.
• Project: Developing a co‑produced, place‑based service map to navigate children and young people’s mental health support: Helping professionals, families, and communities to navigate support, while strengthening shared understanding and accountability across the system. (HFE Visiting Fellow Project)

Making prevention work

This means putting in place the systems, processes and resources needed to deliver sustainable and impactful evidence-based interventions. This requires integrated approaches to understanding the issues, finding solutions and collective action.

• Project: Exploring how Warm Homes and wider prevention initiatives can be embedded into commissioning, metrics, and cross‑sector delivery: Aligning environmental, health, and social care priorities to reduce demand and improve outcomes at scale. (HFE Visiting Fellow Project)

Together, these themes will guide Healthy Futures East’s work with partners across the region to support prevention that is inclusive, place-based and able to improve health outcomes over the long term. Find out more about the prevention workstream here.