Socialist Health Association – understanding the link between your health and your earnings

The Socialist Health Association is a campaigning organisation, founded in 1930, with about 800 members across the UK. We promote health, well-being and the eradication of inequalities through the application of socialist principles to society and government. We stand for:

• Universal Healthcare meeting patients’ needs, free at the point of use, funded by taxation
• Democracy based on freedom of information, election not selection and local decision making
• Equality based on equality of opportunity, affirmative action, and progressive taxation

We campaign for an integrated healthcare system, which reduces inequalities in health and is accountable to the communities it serves. Until 1980 we were called the Socialist Medical Association and membership was initially confined to health professionals. Our members concluded that a free National Health Service, while necessary, was not sufficient to reduce health inequality. We were much influenced by the “The Black Report” (1980), and by the work of Richard Wilkinson ,one of our members whose early work we published, to take a much wider view of health and the importance of economic inequality.

We want to see a community in which power, wealth, and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few; where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. This will not happen in an unhealthy society where wealth is primarily inherited and the benefits of economic growth go to those who are already rich. Ultimately, we think Labour’s long-term goal should be to break the link between a person’s social class and their health.

Our members were, and are, very active in the campaign against this Government’s plans to introduce a more commercial competitive marketplace into the NHS. We work with a wide range of organisations in local communities and the NHS. An important part of our work is to improve mutual understanding between clinicians and politicians.

We want to see a comprehensive, universal NHS overwhelmingly publicly provided and entirely publicly managed. And one that is much more democratically accountable locally and regionally than it ever has been. We want a health and social care system where publicly funded care services are planned and decisions about services and funding are made through open and transparent democratically accountable processes drawing on experiences in Scotland and Wales, where we have active branches.

We are keen to see a much greater engagement of patients and family/ carers in the care process as co-producers of health outcomes and the provision of good information to patients to enable them to be actively engaged. We also want to see much greater involvement of the NHS in community approaches to health.

Martin Rathfelder is the Director of the Socialist Health Association