With the launch of the long-awaited Prevention Green Paper, the government sets out its ambition to create good health and wellbeing and give everybody an equal opportunity to live healthily and happily.

This is vital at a time when inequalities are widening, and life expectancy is stalling. Unequal access to and experience of the wider determinants of health – the quality of the air we breathe, the housing we live in, the education and employment opportunities we have – has had stark consequences. People in deprived areas tend not only to live shorter lives, but they also spend more of those years in poor health.