Lessons from the History of British Health Policy

‘Health policy’ is a slippery concept. In Britain, since the establishment of the National Health Service, it has often come to be associated only with the NHS, but it has a longer running and wider history. Health policy both predates the NHS and goes beyond it. In this introduction we set the chapters in this report in context by exploring some of the issues that run through the history of health policy in Britain. We focus on five areas: (1.) What was or is ‘health policy’? (2.) Where was health policy made? (3.) Who were the policymakers? (4.) What were some of the persisting policy challenges? (5.) What are the politics of health policy?