What next for the NHS New Deal?
Written by Just Treatment’s patient leader: Isabelle Jani Friend
An overview of the plan for the next phase of the NHS New Deal. Sign up to volunteer here
COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of our NHS, but it has also shown us just how vulnerable it is. Now, we must fight for our precious healthcare service and to do this we are going to Listen. Build. Win.
Boris Johnson's New Deal for the NHS is not sufficient, it is a continuation of years of Government underfunding on crucial public services.
That is why we at Just treatment are demanding a new deal for the NHS. One that is people centred rather than centred on profits and politics. We want an NHS that is accessible and fair for all.
Policy is usually dictated by a select few, but we think it’s important that those who are directly affected by decisions made to the NHS, have their say.
We have now completed the Listen phase of our plan. Since May, we have managed to speak to someone from nearly all 650 constituencies in the UK, hearing from over 1000 people, with over 300 volunteers helping us take on these calls.
The conversations we have been having are incredibly powerful and we want to use these stories to create a set of demands to form a New Deal for the NHS. Centred around patient care. Making this deal people powered.
The next phase of our Listen. Build. Win. strategy focuses on building our set of demands.
In the coming weeks, we are holding a series of policy labs on key topics that have been highlighted from our work during the listening phase, to really understand what people would like to see in the demands.
The labs will be open to everyone. You don’t need to work within policy to imagine an alternative deal, you just need to have life experience. Real life stories communicate more powerfully than statistics can. We will discuss ideal situations and from there will develop a succinct set of demands.
Not only will it shape our response to the pandemic, but it will allow us to create an NHS that benefits us all.
We also hope to run volunteer training sessions on how to run campaigns and how to get people with power to listen. This means that when we release the demands, we have the power to succeed.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating, but now more people care about the NHS than ever before. We are using this opportunity to take action, to challenge policy that has underfunded our NHS, that has caused ongoing privatization, and limited patient access to life-changing medications under the prices set from big pharma.
Patients and NHS users have been leading Just Treatment’s campaigns since the start and we won’t allow the NHS to suffer without a fight. This is how we win.