Last week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s on Health and Sustainable Resources gathered sustainable healthcare leaders to discuss how sustainability can underpin forthcoming NHS reforms.  

In Policy Connect’s 2024 Sustainable Healthcare Summit, health leaders identified that scaling up circular solutions required a cultural overhaul in the NHS – and government leadership to drive this.  

Following the publication of the 10-year healthcare plan in the spring, the Government will issue a new NHS mandate that sets goals and a framework for NHS leaders to manage services and prioritise issues such as care access, innovation and tech adoption, and workforce utilisation and training.  

Amidst warnings that the NHS must ‘reform or die’, the APHG and APSRG’s event examined the importance of developing a circular NHS and ensuring that sustainability becomes a key priority of the NHS mandate.  

Chaired by Baroness Ritchie in Parliament, the roundtable examined how greater adoption of circular products and practices can encourage NHS transformation that benefits quality of care, financial resources, continuity of supply, and the environment.  

The session featured insightful presentations from: 

• Caitriona Callan (The Health Foundation). 

• Fiona Adshead (Sustainable Healthcare Coalition). 

• Chris Naylor (Centre for Sustainable Healthcare). 

• Professor Shahin Rahimifard (Loughborough University). 

• Liam Hogg (NHS England). 

• Baroness Natalie Bennett.  

Recommendations based on the discussion will be issued to inform the Government’s long-term healthcare planning and its next NHS mandate and set priorities for joint work of the APHG and APSRG. 

Both groups are already committed to jointly supporting a programme of policy discussion, development, and advocacy on sustainable healthcare this year.  

For more information on the event or Policy Connect’s sustainable healthcare programme, please contact Gaelen Komen (gaelan.komen [at] policyconnect.org.uk (gaelan[dot]komen[at]policyconnect[dot]org[dot]uk)).