THE Northern Echo’s eight page Focus on Health supplement (Echo, Mar 19) made for an interesting read.
The emphasis on “prevention is better than cure” and encouragement to eat healthily, drink less alcohol and exercise more, is good sensible advice.
Yet the best single remedy for the region’s poor health wasn’t mentioned – that being more good quality jobs.
Why? Because all the available evidence points to health levels improving when unemployment levels go down.
Obesity, alcoholism, diabetes, mental illness, which are expensive for the NHS to treat, all reduce when the number of people in work increases, as do teenage pregnancies, illegal drug use, criminality and the prison population.
While better integrating health and social care services makes a lot of sense let’s not forget that unemployment is the biggest single cause of ill-health.
A working region is a healthy region.
Paul Brannen, Jesmond.
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