TY - JOUR T1 - General practice should hold government to account on disease prevention JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 559 LP - 559 DO - 10.3399/bjgp17X693701 VL - 67 IS - 665 AU - Ben Amies Y1 - 2017/12/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/67/665/559.abstract N2 - As GPs, our fate is tied to the ever-increasing prevalence of chronic disease. We firefight these illnesses and encourage behaviour change but rarely think about the root causes of illness. The root causes are often very remote from us, but that makes them no less influential. The Global Burden of Disease 2013 estimated that, in England, an alarming 40% of morbidity and mortality was preventable, with smoking and poor diet alone accounting for half of this number.1 Meanwhile, in the 10 years to 2018, the number of multimorbid people is estimated to increase by over 50% to 2.9 million, a rise identified by the King’s Fund as a major driver of GP demand,2 while ever-increasing workloads drive pressures.Important drivers of preventable illness may be remote from our surgeries, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change them. It is the government’s responsibility to design policies to improve the population’s health, and we need to hold them to account on this. … ER -