Darzi calls for skills to tackle challenge of lifestyle diseases

Lord Darzi

• Increase image
• View all images

Primary and community care organisations must strengthen their skills and infrastructure to tackle "lifestyle diseases" such as obesity, Lord Darzi told an HSJ conference this week.

A week after the health minister's High Quality Care for All report said primary care trusts and local authorities must draw up prevention plans to combat obesity, alcohol consumption, drug addiction and smoking rates, he said lifestyle diseases had become one of the major challenges for the health service.

"Would you have predicted 20 years ago that obesity would be a challenge for the NHS? We need to ask how we would be more proactive," he said. "I don't think that the way services are aligned will meet aspirations. We have to tackle the problems at primary care and community level by building our infrastructure and competencies."

He added that patients used to adopt an "I want" attitude to treatment, but have moved to an "I can" stance, suggesting they want more options for self-management.

"We have a lot of support for piloting personalised budgets and we need to do some rigorous evaluation," he continued. While personal budgets have been a great success in social care, "it could be a different story" in health.

The minister acknowledged managers were concerned about the lack of emphasis on mental health services in his review, but stressed that mental health was important and was being considered.

NHS London director of strategy and commissioning Paul Corrigan told the conference that in the past NHS staff have been reluctant to redesign services and that the views of patient groups and charities should drive change. "We need to take advice from people who are angry at us for being too slow rather than [for] moving too fast."