When prevention works, nothing happens. That's why it gets cut. Joanna Lane on financing prevention as long-term investment.
Health systems in Europe spend a small fraction of their budgets on prevention, and that fraction is renewed annually and cut first when treatment costs rise. Joanna Lane has spent decades working on health and regional development across Europe, and argues that prevention should be reclassified from expenditure to capital investment, financed the way we finance energy grids, transport and pensions. In this conversation she explains what the Horizon Europe project Invest4Health learned from eight regional testbeds, why Public Health Wales disinvested around £10m to reinvest it, how health systems' own procurement and hiring can improve the determinants of health, and what finance ministers need to hear before they will treat prevention as an investment. We also discuss wearables and the longevity trend, where personal responsibility ends and public policy begins, and a three-layer model for funding prevention at scale.
GUEST
Joanna Lane — Managing Director, Stichting Health ClusterNET; Chair, FH Europe Foundation; Invest4Health (Horizon Europe)
Host: Tjaša Zajc
WHAT THE CONVERSATION COVERS
- Why the benefits of prevention stay invisible in health budgets
- Why local prevention and health promotion budgets are the first to be cut
- Invest4Health: eight regional testbeds for financing health promotion and disease prevention
- Smart capacitating investment and the EU high-level task force on social infrastructure
- Why a single financing template didn't work across regions
- Financing toolkits and competence building for regional health authorities
- Reclassifying prevention as capital investment and soft infrastructure
- Public Health Wales: disinvesting from health promotion to reinvest around £10m
- Prevention spending during and after COVID, and the pull back to acute care
- Defence, energy and climate competing for health budgets
- The ripple effect of health spending: local procurement, inclusive employment and NEETs
- How to make the investment case for prevention to a finance minister
- Local Multiplier 3 (LM3) and the return on local procurement
- 20-minute neighbourhoods and multi-use community hubs for older people
- Remote monitoring for independent living: the SMILE project
- Wearables, longevity and the retention problem in consumer digital health
- Personal responsibility vs public policy: school food, screening and familial hypercholesterolaemia
- Three layers of prevention finance: protected budgets, social outcome funds and patient capital
- Metrics for treating prevention as investment in national statistics
CHAPTERS
2:00 The Finance Minister Anecdote 3:18 Welcome & 40 Years in Prevention 3:54 The Invisible Challenge of Prevention 6:12 The Invest for Health Project 10:47 Financing Toolkit & Training for Regions 12:02 Prevention as Capital Investment 13:03 Bold Examples: Disinvest to Reinvest 16:44 COVID's Regression in Prevention 18:04 Healthcare's Ripple Effect on Local Economies 20:50 Engaging Finance Ministries 23:25 Evidence for Return on Investment 25:07 Community Design for Prevention 27:34 Longevity & Digital Health Solutions 33:11 Personal Responsibility vs. Systemic Prevention 36:11 A Three-Layer Financing Model for Prevention
MENTIONED
Invest4Health — Horizon Europe project on financing health promotion and disease prevention
High-Level Task Force on Investing in Social Infrastructure in Europe (report, January 2018)
Syreon Research Institute, Budapest • Public Health Wales • Local Multiplier 3 (LM3)
SMILE project (Innlandet Hospital Trust, Norway) • FH Europe Foundation • EU Safe Hearts Plan
Earlier FoDH episodes: Herko Coomans on interoperability as an infrastructure funding problem [LINK] • Henrique Martins on twenty years of EU health data projects [LINK]
FACES OF DIGITAL HEALTH
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/faces-of-digital-health/id1194284040
#prevention #publichealth #healthfinancing #healthpromotion #diseaseprevention #Invest4Health #healthpolicy #healtheconomics #socialinfrastructure #healthinvestment #digitalhealth #FacesOfDigitalHealth