‘Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s’ green paper

On 22 July 2019, the Department of Health and Social Care published a green paper on tackling the causes of preventable ill health in England. It launched a consultation on its proposals, which ran until October 2019.

The proposals aimed to contribute towards an existing government ‘mission’ (set out in its Industrial Strategy in 2017) to improve life expectancy by at least ‘five healthy independent years’ by 2035, while also closing the gap between the richest and the poorest.

The green paper described the 2020s as the ‘decade of proactive, predictive and personalised prevention’. It focused on four factors affecting health: health care services, lifestyle choices, living conditions and genetics. The government promised to review the NHS Health Check, publish a new chapter of the Childhood Obesity Strategy, launch a new mental health prevention package and modernise the Healthy Child Programme. It also announced a target of a smoke-free population by 2030 and the launch of a new health index to measure population health.

Further developments

By December 2022 the government had not published responses to the consultation or promised further details on its proposals. Several organisations published their responses to the consultation independently. The British Medical Association (BMA), for example, welcomed the government’s increased focus on prevention but criticised the green paper’s lack of political ambition and action.

Some proposals from the green paper were taken forward, for example the Office for National Statistics developed a Health Index for England and Public Health England reviewed the NHS Health Check.