Press Release

Chronic illness is ‘major health challenge of our times’ says The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health

20 June 2007

Chronic illness accounts for 80% of GP consultations and the vast majority of spending in the NHS – and over the next 10 years almost five million people in the UK will die from a chronic condition.

This is the challenge to which The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health is responding with the launch of its new policy and research programme aimed at developing practical proposals to help people living with six of the most common long-term chronic conditions.

The programme, called Creating Partnerships for Health, will focus on allergies, back pain, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, obesity and stress. All six are conditions with which conventional approaches to health - coupled with a massively overburdened NHS -- struggle to cope.

The Foundation’s policy manager Simon Edwards says: ‘Chronic illness is the major health challenge of our times.The conditions we’re looking at undermine people’s quality of life, their work and social opportunities and their contribution to society. There is a huge economic cost too, even beyond the direct health spending - the working days and productivity lost because of the particular six conditions we are concentrating on is staggering, and many employers struggle with the responsibility of supporting staff with for example, stress, depression or chronic back pain. Finding better ways for people to prevent and manage these illnesses will not only improve the lives of sufferers but will also create significant social and economic benefit.

‘The conditions we are focusing on are not easily curable – but they are usually manageable and, even more importantly, preventable. They require a new and different approach that puts the patient at the heart of any attempt to help them back to wellbeing and empowerment.
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‘The key to prevention is in understanding how people’s behaviour can be changed. Finding the levers to persuade people to eat more healthily and undertake regular physical activity is central, as is explaining and promoting methods of coping with life’s stresses and strains.’

The Foundation will be looking at how everyone in society can play a part in avoiding and tackling these conditions. It will work with healthcare professionals and health policy makers, as well as health charities, schools, employers, parents and communities to spread awareness about how to avoid developing these conditions and how to get the best help when they do occur.

The Foundation’s programmes director Ian Brownhill added: ‘The Foundation is uniquely placed to engage with opinions formers to help facilitate change. We will help to join up thinking on the ground about preventing and managing each of these chronic conditions, and have already started to bring together high-level stakeholders to think about the bigger picture in terms of creating a healthier nation.’

The Creating Partnerships for Health programme was launched on 21 May at a reception attended by senior health thinkers and decision-makers, including senior representatives from the Department of Health, the medical Royal Colleges and patient charities.