A shortage of beds for severely unwell eating-disorder patients has forced the NHS to send more than 100 women from England to hospitals in Scotland for treatment since 2017.

The cost of relocating patients, which included under-18s, was more than £10m, with one patient staying more than a year in hospital, costing close to £250,000.

The Guardian spoke to families who warned of the toll of travelling hundreds of miles to see unwell relatives. One mother said she had spent hundreds on petrol to visit her daughter and had slept on the hospital floor after being unable to get a hotel.

Experts say that not being close to family and friends can hinder the recovery of many people with mental health problems, as they are isolated from their support network.

Campaigners have warned of a crisis as demand for treatment among those experiencing anorexia and bulimia has “skyrocketed” since the start of the pandemic. Newly released data shows admissions up 84% in five years.

The Levelling Up white paper, released in February 2022 after major delay, outlines the UK government’s much anticipated strategy for tackling regional inequality. The centrepiece of the government’s reform agenda, “levelling up” is presented as a solution to the UK’s longstanding and serious geographical inequalities (box 1). Although levelling up is already permeating political and media discourse,10 the white paper is the first attempt to translate this broad idea into specific policy commitments to tackle place based inequalities: white papers set out proposals for future legislation.

The coronavirus crisis has disrupted routine healthcare disproportionately across society with women, older people and minority ethnic groups most likely to report cancelled or delayed appointments, prescriptions and procedures, researchers say.

Public health experts trawled through data from nearly 70,000 people enrolled in 12 major UK studies that surveyed the population before and during the epidemic. They found evidence for widespread inequalities, with disadvantaged groups often facing the greatest disruption to their medical care.

“Many of the people who report experiencing the greatest healthcare disruption often had poorer health prior to the pandemic,” said Vittal Katikireddi, a senior author on the study and a professor of public health at the University of Glasgow. “While experiencing healthcare disruption is common across all social groups, our study raises the possibility that the health of the most disadvantaged in society might actually be more impacted by the disruption to the health system.”

An inquiry into racial disparities used outdated references and notably underplayed the impact of structural racism in health outcomes, the UK’s leading authority on public health has said, in a new blow to the credibility of the much-criticised report.

Sir Michael Marmot, who led a pioneering work into health inequalities in 2010, which was updated a decade later, said that while there was “much that is good” in the report’s chapter on public health, he was concerned about “shortcomings” in its approach.

Writing for the Guardian, Marmot said the report by the Downing Street-appointed Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (Cred) had cited his 2010 study but did not consider the 2020 update or a subsequent study he led on structural factors behind varying Covid outcomes.

Marmot also criticised the report’s contention that health inequalities should be considered an outcome of factors such as deprivation and poor housing rather than ethnicity. Such social conditions “are themselves the result of longstanding inequalities and structural racism”, he noted.

The report’s focus on disparities due to social class was only part of the story, Marmot argued. “There are health differences between races that are not fully explained by class, and so therefore racism must play some role. To put it simply, these two issues may overlap but they are not the same thing.”

Some very interesting stats, which provide some food security insights here. This article tells us:

Food security, put simply, is the state of having reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food. While the UK benefits from a successful agricultural industry, many domestic and international factors affect food production and prices for consumers. This became evident during the world food price spike of 2008.

A successful agricultural industry gives the perception that food security isn’t at risk in the UK. But the country is only around 58% self-sufficient and is reliant on imports from countries all over the world. This has caused with a trade deficit of £24 billion in food.

This fact is magnified by Brexit. The recent pandemic has also made it harder to import foods from global locations, and food that is shipped over is taking longer in transit.

Lockdown restrictions have also left farming and food production in a situation where it needs to bounce back from the crisis of the pandemic.

The current climate

Around 84% of fruit and 46% of vegetables consumed in the country are imported. While Brexit and COVID-19 threaten a steady supply to urban areas, problems created by climate change also risk disrupting imports of food from abroad.

Climate change can reduce global food access and affect its quality. An increase in temperature, change in precipitation patterns, extreme weather events, and reductions in water availability can result in reduced agricultural productivity.

For those living in a rural location, the opportunity to grow fruit and vegetables in allotments, gardens and other accessible land is one that not only gives people a fresh supply of food when they need it but a chance to be part of something bigger — helping increase food security.

Health powers should be handed to elected mayors as part of a ‘rejuvenated and fortified wave of devolution,’ a think-tank report has suggested.

The report by Respublica said the move would provide ‘regional democratic legitimacy’ to devolved health and care systems.

Respublica previously proposed a ‘path to reform’ involving ‘transformative devolution to the counties’ and ‘complete reorganisation in the form of single-tier unitary councils’.

It also suggested that adult and children’s social care departments of local authorities should be merged as part of a plan to integrate health and social care into one unitary system as a ‘first step towards full devolution’.

The report said ‘full place-based devolution of power and authority for health delivery from Whitehall and Westminster to local health and care economies’ was key.

The report read: ‘Devolution to the locality is an inspirational ambition that will mobilise the health and care workforce, reversing its increasingly dispirited outlook.

‘It will replace the current jumble of confused jurisdictions and unclear responsibilities, both within the NHS and between the NHS and local authorities.’ On Devo Manc, the report said it had ‘not lived up to initial aspirations,’ adding:

‘Devolution that looked good on paper has not been followed through with the type of delegated executive authority, driven by competent management, over the still-disordered patchwork of local authorities, commissioners, primary care, community-based care and hospital providers.

‘In conclusion, a rejuvenated and fortified wave of devolution needs to be launched.’

The inquiry into disparities in the risk and outcomes of Covid-19 commissioned by the Department of Health identifies major inequalities, confirming that – contrary to the popular refrain – we are not all in this together.

Mortality risk from Covid-19 is higher among black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people.

The Public Health England (PHE) review confirms that the risk of dying among those diagnosed with Covid-19 is higher in those in BAME groups than in white ethnic groups.

After accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region, it found that people of Bangladeshi ethnicity were at most risk, with around twice the risk of death than people of white British ethnicity. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, other Asian, Caribbean and other black ethnicity had between 10% and 50% higher risk of death when compared to white British. The risk of mortality for people of Bangladeshi ethnicity was in line with other research, by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), but for other ethnicities it was generally lower.

In previous years, all-cause mortality rates were lower in Asian and black ethnic groups than in white ethnic groups, PHE said, meaning that mortality risk for Covid-19 was a reversal of what had been seen in the past.

Diagnosis of Covid-19 among BAME people is also greater.

When adjusted for age the highest diagnosis rates (which does not necessarily correlate with incidence) of Covid-19 were in people of Black ethnic groups (486 in females and 649 in males) and the lowest were in people of white ethnic groups (220 in females and 224 in males).

Sleaford and North Hykeham’s MP has called for more fruit and vegetables to be grown and consumed in the UK to boost people’s ‘five a day’ intake while supporting British farmers.

A farmer’s wife, Dr Caroline Johnson MP was speaking on Tuesday in the House of Commons in a debate on a continuation of direct payments to farmers for the coming year during the transition period after the UK leaves the EU.

In one of several points she made in the hearing of the Bill, she called for subsidy payments for farmers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to be speedy and also for small farmers to be supported in applying for some of the grants available.

She said: “What has changed is that, 30 years ago, 83 per cent of that fruit and veg was produced in the UK, and now only 54 per cent is grown here. That means that we have a huge capacity to improve the amount of home-grown fruit and veg. In fact, we could grow the sector by 66 per cent overnight if people were to consume their five a day immediately.”

She urged the department to think of the public good of producing extra food as well as producing environmental access improvements linked to grants for farmers and their land. 

“We should think of food production, particularly fruit and veg production, as a great public good for our society, as it would really help to improve the health of our nation.

Snacking should be banned on public transport and extra taxes placed on unhealthy foods to tackle child obesity, England’s outgoing chief medical officer says. 

In her final report as CMO, Dame Sally Davies also called for tighter rules on advertising and takeaways.

She said children needed more help as they were “drowning in a flood” of unhealthy options.

If ministers were not bold, she added, they would fail to cut obesity rates.

A target to halve rates by 2030 has been set.

Dame Sally said: “The unavoidable fact is that over time our environment has become very unhealthy without us realising. 

“Our children are now suffering from painful, potentially life-limiting disease. 

“Our politicians need to be bold and help everyone embrace healthier life choices.”

The proportion of obese and overweight children has doubled in the past 30 years.

Today around a third are obese or overweight by the age of 11 in England – with a minority, but growing number, classed as severely obese.

If you really want to go there, there are some pretty alarming downsides to pet ownership. In England, for instance, between 6,000 and 7,000 people are admitted to hospital for dog bites each year. Tripping over pets is another potential danger – each year, this sends an estimated 87,000 people to hospitals in the US, particularly elderly people. And what of the parasites that pets bring into the house – the fleas, ticks and mites? And the potentially fatal diseases they can transmit to humans, from pathogens such as salmonella (from reptiles) and capnocytophaga that can be passed to humans in cat and dog saliva? For many people, the answer to whether pets are good for us is clearly no – although, to be fair, you are far more likely to be exposed to disease or violence by another human than by a dog, cat or pygmy hedgehog.