Moving people’s mindsets about health

Healthy societies need all the right building blocks in place for people to thrive, including decent housing, secure jobs and safe, accessible spaces to be active and socialise. Because so many different factors affect our health, the responsibility for improving it can’t just be the job of the health and care system – it must span all of government and wider society. 

The public, media and political debates have traditionally focused on the impact of the NHS and individuals’ behaviours on health. But we need to tell a new story: one that increases people’s understanding of the broad policies and actions needed to improve health and reduce inequalities. The Health Foundation has been working with FrameWorks UK to do this since 2016. 

Understanding people’s mindsets about health

Mindsets are deep, enduring patterns of thinking – they are the how and why that underpin what we think, and they help us make sense of the world around us. FrameWorks UK research for the Health Foundation found people’s mindsets about health to be overwhelmingly individualistic and medicalised. That is, people understand health primarily in relation to medicine, doctors and health care and as being driven by individual choices. This understanding of people’s mindsets informed the development and testing of effective ways of communicating about health and inequalities. 

Communicating about the building blocks of health

In 2022, we published a toolkit to help people working in public health frame their communications to inspire action and change. This toolkit recommends using the metaphor of the ‘building blocks of health’ to help people understand how wider determinants influence our chance to be healthy.

We have been delighted with the response to this toolkit – around 50 councils across the UK have now published documents or web pages using the term ‘building blocks of health’. Follow-up work with FrameWorks UK and public health teams across the country has supported the adoption and implementation of the recommendations in the toolkit. Over the coming months, we will publish further resources to support more teams wanting to do this.

Tracking changing mindsets

Together with Joseph Rowntree Foundation, we are funding FrameWorks UK’s Moving Mindsets programme to develop and implement a tool to track mindsets about social issues (including health) in the UK and understand if and when these are changing. 

Interesting findings are emerging: how people in the UK think about health is changing in ways that show a better understanding of the building blocks of health and the role of government in addressing these. As detailed in a briefing published by FrameWorks UK, there is new understanding that health is a precious asset, not only for individuals but for our society, and that our health is shaped by the context of our lives.

Ensuring a strong foundation

A lot has happened since we started working with FrameWorks UK that also may have contributed to this broader understanding of health, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. The new government’s mission-based approach is a strong step towards a broader understanding of the building blocks of health, and our Health at the Heart of Government briefing shows how that can be taken further. FrameWorks UK’s recent work also found strong support for a whole government approach to health, with nearly three-quarters of adults supporting this. 

We still have a long way to go. These new mindsets are emergent and fragile, and there is a need to reinforce and grow awareness about the building blocks of healthier lives through how we communicate about health and inequalities. We’ll continue resources to support people to tell a new story about health.