City Research Online

Abstract

Governments all over the world are struggling to control the spiralling costs of healthcare – the UK government is no exception. Its long-term strategy includes a much greater focus on prevention: to keep people as healthy and productive as possible for longer. This paper asks whether a greater focus on prevention is a possible lifeline for the National Health Service (NHS) as is often claimed, but it also examines other benefits to society. After considering various examples of prevention and the metrics used to measure their effectiveness, we use tobacco consumption as a case study to evaluate the costs to the public purse and to wider society. We give further examples, including obesity, but in less depth. We find that whilst there are significant benefits to public expenditure, including the NHS, in both cases, these are dwarfed by wider benefits to society both in terms of tangible economic benefits and improved well-being. We offer several suggestions for improving our understanding of the effectiveness of prevention policies in general and how the Actuarial profession can contribute to this debate.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	actuarial research, NHS, preventative care, tobacco use
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Faculty of Actuarial Science & Insurance
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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