The Transition Town Lewes Health group had a brilliant inaugural meeting on May 30th and several creative possibilities are sprouting shoots. The foundational idea is the Local Health Service (LHS) as an umbrella for a collaboration that could augment our beautiful but flagging NHS.

The meeting agreed that we should continue to meet as a TTL Local Health Initiative group. Anyone interested in joining in the discussion and receiving more news and information should contact catherinemrees@ymail.com or suemfleming@gmail.com and request to join the google group email forum.

Prof David Peters started the meeting by saying that the health of each person depends on relationships and on community, yet the main treatment in the NHS is still the biomedical model, which has grown Big Pharma to $1 trillion p.a. industry.  Ten  years ago Derek Wannless reported under ‘Fully engaged scenario’ saying that the only way to make the NHS sustainable is to get individuals and communities to take responsibility for their own health. This has not yet happened, and GPs (who should have the best jobs in the world) are burning out and leaving in droves. If madness, according to Einstein, is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result, then if we are to flourish together we will have to find radically different ways of doing health. David is chair of integrated health at University of Westminster, and co founder of the British Holistic Medical Association (BHMA) which publishes the Journal of Holistic Healthcare (JHH). A pdf power point will be available shortly.

We moved into small groups with discussions around various topics:
– Nature connection, food and agriculture
– Healing the healers
– Community & individual empowerment & engagement
– Technology and health
– Creative arts

Discussed specifically were NatureGain and care farms, end of life care in the community, mindfulness, dance & voice, medical student training, permaculture, and much else besides! The small groups reported back their findings and have written up some notes which will follow shortly.

Please do get in touch if you are concerned about ‘peak medicine’; thinking that the current health care model is unsustainable in its present form and that there is a place for local, positive changes that we can make if we come together in an inspired and creative way.