'The North is ill, Prime Minister, but you can help us thrive'

But our population is also ill. As this week’s Marmot report shows, health inequalities continue to widen between North and South and, as today’s Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA) analysis shows, the gap between health research funding also continues to widen.

The North is increasingly speaking with one voice on the need for levelling-up and today 22 senior members of the region’s health system, Hospital CEOs, Deans of Medicine and CEOs of Academic Health Science Networks, have written to the Prime Minister to call for proper investment in health research in the North of England.

London, Oxford and Cambridge, receive £61.56 per head in health research funding versus the North’s £20.99.

If the Government is serious about levelling up, it cannot continue to ignore an area of economic potential and need across the North.

Our NHS Trust and Universities are themselves economic powerhouses. They train and employ people across a huge range of professions and buy products and services worth millions per year from local businesses. 

They also have expertise and talent that attract life sciences business to the region; a vital economic asset in the post-Brexit economy.  

The NHSA is proud to represent the region’s universities, hospitals and AHSNs as they invent, develop, test and deploy new products and services for the next generation of technologies and medicines.

They do this alongside the activity that we usually see as their day jobs, but research and innovation are functions that are vital if patient treatment and care is to improve. 

There is a bitter irony in the fact that we have some of the best health and care organisations in the UK, yet we suffer from the worst health outcomes.

We need a unity of purpose when it comes to investment in the North. Transport, skills, housing are all key to the health of the population. Sustained investment in health research to improve health and the economy of the North is also required.

Today, with the help of the Yorkshire Post, we offer Government two ways in which they can do this: 

1) Deliver proper, long-term investment in Public Health and the National Health Service in the North: the productivity gap between North and south is, in large part, due to poorer health in the North.

Revise the funding formula for the NHS in the North and invest heavily in public health initiatives that work and keep people economically active.  

2) Put NHS and University expertise at the heart of a Northern Life Sciences strategy for economic growth (Connected Health North).

The 21 st century economic base of health technology, data and personalised medicines is thriving in the North. Thousands of Northern companies want to work with the NHS, Universities and AHSNs to develop products and services that patients need. The barrier to providing that support from the experts within a stretched system is capacity.

We call on the Government to invest in the health and care system in the North of England to boost productivity and drive growth.

Addressing inequality and the division it creates will take time but action to match the rhetoric is needed; and needed now.  The North is watching to see what happens next.