NHS 75/150

NHS 75/150 will engage diverse communities in Greater Manchester (GM) in discussions around the future of health and care. What can we learn from the past 75 years of the NHS? What will our health and social care system look like in another 75 years? What needs to change to better meet people's visions of better health?

The project builds on an ambitious 5 year research programme on the history of the National Health Service (NHS) focused on answering important questions about experiences of health in postwar British everyday life and the place of the NHS. The first major output is the oral history collection - Voices of Our National Health Service (VONHS) - which is deposited at the British Library as a permanent public resource. VONHS is one of the largest health-focused collections in the world and is unique in its capture of the 70+ year history of a national health and care system, including the Covid-19 pandemic, through the voices of patients, staff and communities. VONHS sheds new light on postwar British health and culture and will help launch exciting new explorations of the changing attitudes to health and wellbeing and the interplay between the NHS and British identity. A rich and compelling resource for public engagement work around the history and futures of health and care, VONHS provides the platform for NHS 75/150.

We will work with communities which have been identified as priority communities in GM's health and social care strategy because they suffer the worst health outcomes and inequalities. These include older and younger people, and people of colour/ethnically diverse communities. These communities experience many challenges and barriers in accessing health at the same time as experiencing greater health inequalities. If the future of health and care in GM is to be more equitable and improvements in health are to be secured then it is vital that people from these communities are able to share their aspirations, hopes and dreams for the future of health and care. By working in partnership with groups who are gatekeepers to these communities and using co-production approaches and creative methods, this project will create a conduit connecting these communities to debates around the future of health and care in GM and beyond. A Communities Advisory Group (CAG) will be established through recruiting community representatives. Using stories from VONHS and drawing on their lived experiences, the CAG will work with artists to co-curate an exhibition of graphic narratives spanning the past and the future of health and care. The exhibition will tour local communities and be supported by a programme of workshops that will enable participants to share their stories and their visions for the future through writing, interviews and artwork. We will work with the CAG to produce a health futures agenda that reflects communities priorities. A final policy workshop will give communities the opportunity to present the agenda and outputs of the project to GM stakeholders in health and care.

Legacy for the project will be ensured in several ways including creating an eZine of creative outputs that will be available online through the programme's website (nhs70.org.uk) and the recording of oral history interviews about people's wishes for the future of health and care which will be deposited in VONHS and available as a permanent public resource for use now and in the future.