Call to protect funding to tackle preventable diseases in Wales

Nation.Cymru staff

Funding to prevent illness should be increased and protected from short-term budget pressures, according to a new Public Health Wales report.

The report warns that health systems devote too little money to prevention despite the scale of avoidable disease and growing demand for treatment.

It calls for longer-term funding arrangements and a consistent way to track spending, including investment in housing, education and transport that can improve health.

The report, Approaches to Measuring and Growing Prevention Spend and Investment, says preventative public health interventions accounted for just 3.4% of health expenditure across OECD countries in 2025.

It highlights around 1.8 million avoidable deaths each year linked to conditions such as heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease and diabetes across the World Health Organization’s European Region.

An estimated 60% of those deaths could be prevented by reducing risk factors and through effective public health measures, according to the report.

In Wales, cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory conditions and type 2 diabetes account for much of the burden of premature deaths.

The report examines approaches used internationally to direct more money towards prevention. These include ring-fenced budgets, which reserve funding for a specific purpose, and taxes whose proceeds are allocated to preventative work.

Other options include pooling budgets across public services and linking investment to agreed outcomes. Longer-term budget planning could also help protect spending through changes of government.

Dr Mariana Dyakova, consultant in public health and head of international health at Public Health Wales, said: “At a time of growing demand and limited resources, we cannot afford to keep treating prevention as an optional extra.”

She called for a move away from short-term funding decisions and for work with partners to attract additional investment.

The report identifies philanthropic organisations, ethical investors, socially responsible businesses and development banks as potential sources of funding to complement public spending.

‘Stay healthy’

Professor Isabel Oliver, Chief Medical Officer for Wales, said: “The future health of our nation will be determined not by how much illness we treat, but by how successfully we create the conditions for people to stay healthy in the first place.”

She added: “This report shows that countries which make long-term investments in prevention are not only improving health outcomes, they are building stronger, more resilient societies.”

Marie Brousseau-Navarro, Deputy Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and director for health, said the findings could help public bodies assess how they allocate resources.

“This report provides timely international evidence to support Wales’s ambition to shift from responding to ill health towards preventing it,” she said.

The report also argues that measuring prevention spending solely within health services misses investment elsewhere that affects people’s health, including housing, education, transport and social protection.