Please support campaigning journalism in support of our NHS

For many years the NHS has been unable to escape crisis and has struggled to keep up with the needs of patients. undermined by flawed government policy.

As health (?) campaigners, we have worked to defend the NHS and change policy, but despite huge public support for the NHS it has often been difficult to create enough pressure on our politicians because:

· Too often people don’t hear about threats to their services at an early stage

· The truth can be obscured by misinformation or lies

· The issues behind the NHS crisis are complex and the media have not consistently covered them

We decided that as journalist and researchers, we could help address this problem through The Lowdown.

Help us fund our work to ensure there is a properly funded strategy to raise NHS capacity in the wake of the pandemic

The Lowdown’s regular analysis of the government approach on the NHS, early warning of threats to services, provides an antidote to frequent misinformation from ministers. Bi-weekly, we provide freely campaigning journalism and research for the public and NHS staff, providing evidence-based information, public interest investigations, and explainers of policy problems and solutions in accessible ways.

If you can, please donate to help fund our work so we can improve public awareness and challenge our policymakers to build a more sustainable NHS.

The NHS has been under the greatest pressure in its history during Covid. On top of a decade of underinvestment in staff and equipment, wasteful reorganizations, and growing privatisation of services, it is crucial to help the NHS to adapt to the rising demands of our population.

Recent history tells us we can’t leave it to our politicians to come up with a plan and that the public and NHS staff must be involved.

Through your donation, you will be helping develop public debate on:

1. Why is there still no funded plan to raise staffing across the NHS?

2. Why is the government investing in the private sector rather than NHS capacity?

3. What can we do to make NHS decisions more accountable to the people they affect?

4. The level of unmet need is rising and access to some care more inequitable, how can we change that?

You will also be joining a network of other journalists, activists, trade union members, and NHS staff who are working together to create a larger and more active network of NHS

WHO ARE WE?

Paul Evans (NHS Support Federation) and Dr John Lister (London Health Emergency, KONP and HCT), with over 50 years combined experience between them as researchers and campaigners are leading this project to build a news and investigation unit to inform NHS supporters and workers.

We have a small staff team and a growing community of freelance contributors. we are non-profit making, independent and our work is evidence based and freely available.

We are committed to helping to train and support the next generation of health journalists, as they are an essential tool in holding our politicians and health leaders to account and getting to the truth.

WHAT MOTIVATES US?

The NHS has mnay commiedt people working for it but it has hit by wasteful reform and a series of failed policies; leaving it where it is today – understaffed, underfunded and struggling to plan and deliver care in all the ways that our population needs.

Even so, NHS staff still manage to care for millions of patients successfully everyday. So in the NHS we have a brilliant concept, that has worked in practice for over 70 years but which has been regularly under supported and undermined by government policy.

A crucial factor is that the public has been consistently misled about national policy. And locally, decisions about the planning of our services have become more remote from the public.

However, we have seen some powerful interventions by local communities, campaigners and trade unions, often defending services that are under threat. They have proved that when people have the information and get organised they have can engineer impressive change.

These experiences inspired us to develop a resource that can help build a bigger community of NHS supporters who are knowledgeable and prepared to defend the values of the NHS.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Donate to our fund to raise £20,000 to support our journalism and investigations fund over the next year.

What are the threats to the services, both locally and nationally, we want to investigate and write about them.

The reorganisation of the NHS that is alreday taking place, who will be runnning our NHS

What happening to accountability

Raise support for a public rubn NHS

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