A week prior to the release of the NHS 10-year health plan, Geeta set out her vision for reform:

The creation of a national health innovation service...

"Reform needs to be far-reaching and requires a new mindset. We are currently losing staff with innovative minds and skills because bureaucracy and time constraints stifle new ideas.

We need a national health innovation service – an arm of the NHS where employees can take new ideas rather than going through their line managers and never hearing back. The NHS must be a temple not just for the delivery of healthcare services but for innovation."

The importance of communicating the why, not just the how...

"The golden thread is the impact that ill-health has on the economy; it holds back growth. Research recently conducted by the Create Health Foundation, which I founded, revealed that one in seven women have been forced to quit a job because of a health condition."

Moving from treatment to prevention...

"Reforming the NHS is not an end in itself; it is an essential pre-condition for improving our living standards and enhancing family life. We will only achieve this if we focus our efforts on health activation, improvement and education as the three pillars for prevention."

"The government has announced a £50 million investment to facilitate the delivery of 270 million messages through the (NHS) app this year, an increase of 70 million compared to the previous financial year and this is welcome news, but it should do more to educate patients about their conditions, providing targeted, reliable and timely information."

"NICE also has a bigger role to play. At present, it mainly provides guidelines about treatment; its remit should be extended to embrace prevention. Education should start in schools; I launched the UK’s first fertility education module pilot in 2016 and there is a strong case to include it in the national curriculum."

Tackling the underlying causes...

"Unless we address social determinants of health such as housing, employment, heating and living conditions for families, which are risk factors for poor health, we cannot achieve upstream prevention."

Read the full article here.

Geeta calls for balancing the boardroom and tackling toxic workplace practices in her article for Business Reporter:

"Despite continued focus on gender equality and diversity in the media, true change for women at work has, sadly, been moving at a glacial pace. As highlighted by the Women in Finance Charter recently, just one in three of the organisations who have signed the Charter met their gender diversity targets last year."

Read the full article here.

Following the announcement that the maternity and neonatal unit at Royal Free Hospital will be closing, Geeta covers the findings of the Economist Impact report and more in her solution-oriented analysis for Reaction, concluding:

"We need a long-term perspective; this is not a quick fix. Birth rates have been declining across Europe for more than 50 years and the total fertility rate in the EU has halved since 1960, so this is not simply a UK problem. A radical policy re-think is required, and we can learn from family-friendly solutions that other countries are adopting."

Geeta was the UK medical expert for the Economist Impact report, entitled 'Fertility policy and practice: a Toolkit for Europe', published in October last year. 

Read the full article here.

Geeta in the Daily Express on declining birth rates:

"I use the phrase “political infertility” to describe this crisis because it has been caused by policy decisions that prevent fair and equal access to assisted reproduction services, or create socio-economic conditions that deter couples from starting a family. Failing to address the causes of population decline is therefore a political decision. This is not an insoluble problem."

Read the full article here.

In a piece for The House Magazine, Geeta wrote:

"Women’s pain is too often dismissed, recorded as emotional, or misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Until we understand the underlying reasons behind this ‘medical misogyny’ and find practical solutions, the NHS reform agenda is doomed to fail."

She goes on to say that women's health hubs should be physical hubs with facilities for one-stop diagnosis and cost-effective community-based healthcare, and that this could be achieved within the existing budget by diverting funds from secondary care. Geeta also says that women's health hubs must be designed to address the socio-economic needs of their communities to tackle underlying health inequalities.

"This could be achieved within the existing budget by diverting funds from secondary care, but the hubs must be designed to address the socio-economic needs of their communities to tackle underlying health inequalities. This can only happen with a cross-governmental approach, addressing health inequalities and social determinants of health through local government and the voluntary sector, and adding women’s health education to the curriculum."

Read the full article here.

From the abstract:

“A low-cost, simplified IVF system has been developed and shown to be safe, cost-effective, and widely applicable to low-resource settings. Combined with inexpensive mild ovarian stimulation protocols, this could become a truly effective means of treating infertility and performing assisted reproduction at affordable prices, but only if such programmes are sincerely desired and supported by all relevant stakeholders.”

Download and read the full journal here.

"Reproductive health is slowly climbing its way up the rungs of the boardroom agenda, as a host of formidable campaigners have raised their voices to speak out on the impact of reproductive and hormonal health issues, such as miscarriage, infertility and menopause, in the workplace."

Read about the key findings from a survey launched by CREATE Fertility, in conjunction with Cityparents (now WorkLife Central), in Geeta's article for DiversityQ here.