Memorial to Peter Draper, 3rd July 1933 - 30th July 2016

Peter Draper’s Legacy to Public Health Policy, by Alex Scott-Samuel

I first met Peter in I think November 1976, wandering the streets of Eastbourne with Gordon Best and John Dennis before they presented their Health and Wealth paper.

‘Health & Wealth’ Peter Draper, Gordon Best & John Dennis.
Unit for the Study of Health Policy, Guy’s Hospital Medical School

That paper had a great impact on me – it introduced me to critical perspectives on economic growth that have served me well ever since. And it led me to reading all the USHP publications and immersing myself in their socio-ecological critique of health and public policy.

Peter really invented the critical study of health policy in the UK and equally if not more importantly, imported the notion of healthy public policy, which Nancy Milio had started in the US. More of Nancy later. USHP were also instrumental in embedding health promotion in the UK at a time when lifestyle health education was the most we could expect from government. Making the healthier choices the easier choices was I believe a USHP invention.

I remained an avid fan of USHP, though being 200 miles away in Liverpool, there wasn't much contact. I attended the final excellent USHP conference when it closed in 1984 - both a celebration and a wake.

I think I got more involved with Peter after that - I recall well his contribution at The Other Economic Summit which WHO sponsored at Bedford College in 1985. That was co-organised by the great macroeconomic critic James Robertson who is still going strong and who Peter referenced in the Health is Wealth paper.

In 1986 Peter and I published a paper in the Health Service Journal entitled Whatever Happened to Public Health?i it expressed our frustration both with the impact of Thatcherism and with the inability of the then Faculty of Community Medicine to engage with the politics of health. As a result of the debate which followed that article, we founded the Public Health Alliance which did some very good work over the years that followed.

For those who hadn't experienced USHP, Peter's real legacy began with ‘Health Through Public Policy.’

‘Health Through Public Policy. The Greening of Public Health.’ 1991, The Merlin Press Green Print.

Peter brought together an excellent group of authors to write a collection of essays that really expressed the social, political and ecological dimensions of his and their work.

Through the book and also through the way in which Peter's innovative ideas diffused through the UK health discourse, he has made an immeasurable impact on thinking and action in health and in public policy. Peter's work is the key reason why, these days, we take it for granted that poverty, discrimination, unemployment and the arms trade can and should be viewed as health issues.

When Peter first started as a hospital doctor he was alienated by the parasitic impact of privatisation on the NHS. After his retirement he became a vigorous campaigner in this area - a perspective I fully share. Since I became chair, the Socialist Health Association is speaking out against NHS privatisation – as is Jeremy Corbyn. A comment from Peter

Draper on Corbyn – email, 12 August 2015
“A politically hopeful time at last! I haven't seen anything about Jeremy's health policy. Going by today's profile in the Guardian, he is likely to develop this in a bottom-up way. Have you sent him anything on health yet? If not, can I urge you to lose no time in getting our sort of policies discussed?”


i'll end with two absent friends.
Hugo Crombie…

"I would have loved to come and celebrate Peter's life and work - I'm proud to have worked closely with him after leaving Liverpool. I have many happy memories of talking about work, life and a range of other topics with him while picking food for lunch from his allotment.
I'm afraid however that I can't make it as the date coincides with my last day at work at NICE. I'm off to pastures new, although not clear what at the moment."


Here finally is an extract from a recollection of Peter I requested from the great Nancy Milio - she also comments on Peter's legacy.
Nancy Milio on Peter
“I first met Peter in 1983. I was in London to explore how health promotion policy was being done in the UK, including handling by the mass media... Peter generously met me at Victoria Station when I arrived. He then drove me to lunch of appetizing vegetarian fare and long discussion with some staff at Guy’s. We seemed to be thinking along similar lines which I thought quite amazing....
He was always interesting and evocative to talk with, willing to engage in vigorous exchanges and push boundaries, speaking in ways that were not always popular. At the same time he was generous with his time and attention. I can only hope his kind of constructive pushback to the conventional has left its mark on the younger people who are assuming decision-making positions that will determine health in an era of climate change and inequalities.

Dr Alex Scott-Samuel, Senior Lecturer in Public Health, University of Liverpool; Chair Socialist Heath Association 2017

WORKING AT USHP
The Unit for the Study of Health Policy (USHP) was an inter-disciplinary team which Peter set up in 1975, with the aid of a 5-year grant from the King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London. The King’s Fund showed courage in funding this. The Unit was part of the Department of Community Medicine at Guy’s Hospital Medical School, under Jock Anderson who had a turbulent relationship with their rebellious offspring, but to their credit stayed with it. The Unit survived until 1984, struggling to find funding in its later years. I was a research assistant in the team from 1978 to 1981. It was only my second job! I was very fortunate to have this unique experience.
There was much debate amongst us on the difference between inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary! The professional backgrounds of the young team were extra-ordinarily wide-ranging. They included medicine, epidemiology, demography, social science, history and economics and demonstrate Peter’s breadth of vision. Team members included, amongst others and in no particular order, James Partridge, Jennie Popay, Gordon Best,Tony Smart, Linda Marks, John Dennis and David St George, amongst others.
The very clear purpose of the Unit was to “promote the informed public discussion of issues of health policy”, by publishing reports and working with the media. Its reports were deliberately aimed at the general reader, including politicians and civil servants, as much as professionals working in public health, and aimed to promote public debate.
The Unit was supported by an Advisory Council which was chaired for some years by Drummond Hunter, an outstanding leader who led the Scottish Health Service Planning Council, and included amongst others David Player who became Director of the Health Education Council in the early 1980s.

THE WORK OF USHP
It is hard to appreciate now how radical the Unit’s work seemed at the time. How contested it was. The concept of sustainable development which underpinned the Unit’s work, the need to balance economic, social and environmental development, was in its infancy in the 1970s
The availability of strong evidence on the health damage caused by anti-social, anti-environmental economic policy was quite new. I remember vividly the impact of, for example, Harvey Brenner’s work on mental illness and the economy; Marc Lalonde’s book “A new perspective on the health of Canadians”, and Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” all of which were published in the early 1970s. And then a little later there was of course the scandal of the suppression of the seminal Black Report on inequalities in health: just 260 copies were famously made available by the Department of Health in 1980, before it was published properly by Pelican.
The Unit for the Study of Health Policy published an unprecedented and unique series of ground-breaking publications which are still remembered in the public health community. Whilst preparing this, I found that a couple of them are still available in a library in Australia! They included:
Health, Money and the NHS (1976);
Economic Policy and Health (1976);
Health, The Mass Media and the NHS (1977)
The NHS in the next 30 years – a new perspective (1978);
And one that was particularly important for me, Rethinking Community Medicine: towards a renaissance in public health (1979);
And a paper in the BMJ in 1980 called “Three Types of Health Education” which was widely quoted for some years.

The NHS in the next 30 years
Importantly and perhaps unusually, Peter wanted to have an impact on both public health and also on the NHS. Most USHP publications (and Peter’s subsequent papers, articles and letters) had content on both, underpinned by a vision of a health-promoting economy. He always saw the need for balance – effective prevention of ill health, but also better treatment services.
The essence of the USHP’s work was the conflict between health and unselective economic growth, perhaps best summarised in “The NHS in the next 30 years”. Chapter 2 of this contains a trenchant critique of economic growth - that higher GNP means a better-off Britain and a happier world – on the grounds that GNP, used as a surrogate to measure social well-being, is misleading, partial and invalid (because it measures only the level of economic activity, not its purpose or constituents).
Chapter 3 set out the principles of a health-promoting rather than health-damaging economy, creating an environment where the healthier choices are the easier choices (a slogan we all used for years afterwards) for example though a radically-different basis for agriculture.
Then in Chapter 5, “The NHS in the next 30 years” describes the shift needed from an NHS dominated by modern scientific medicine undertaking “repair and salvaging”, to focusing upstream on a more positive approach to health. Crucially, it was mistaken to think that progress in health will be achieved by first getting the economy right, so that we can later spend more on health services.

Rethinking Community Medicine
“Rethinking Community Medicine: Towards a renaissance in public health” argued that Community Medicine which was then as you will recall a new medical specialty within the NHS, established in the context of the massive reorganisation of 1974, was being medicalised by the NHS. “Rethinking Community Medicine” recalled the glory days of the Medical Officer of Health, unafraid to take on major social issues in the fight for the public’s health.
To quote its analysis: “Within the reorganised NHS … with its focus on individual responsibility for health, Community Medicine has a … mistaken task. It has led to the neglect of effective watchdog activities in relation to contemporary health hazards. The unhealthy environment of today … is taken largely as given, as a series of problems to be adapted to, or as a subject for medical preaching to supposedly guilty individuals (refer to victim-blaming). As an approach to the prevention of disease and the promotion of health this is totally inadequate.”
“Rethinking” set out a vision for the creation of a contemporary public health movement which stimulated change towards a healthier social and economic environment, with health promotion teams focused on, for example, transport or food and nutrition. Peter often quoted from the Greek myth of Hygieia, the goddess of good health – the importance of people collectively governing their lives wisely.
It is both astonishing and sad to reflect that USHP publications are now nearly 40 years old, but are as true and valid today as when they were published. Times have NOT changed.
The shaping of public debate on health by the mass media (mainly newspapers in those days) was a crucial focus of the USHP’s work, with daily analysis of news content being undertaken and responses made. Peter’s attempts to influence the mass media continued throughout his life. I am grateful to Marcia Saunders for this one – perhaps the pinnacle of Peter’s coverage in the press – no less than a Daily Mail front page headline, “POP DOC SLAMS HEART SWAPS” – Christian Barnard was undertaking the first heart transplants at the time – the ultimate in repair and salvage.

WORKING WITH PETER
Peter was brave and fearless in tackling the “establishment” both within the NHS and in the political and economic system. He was prepared to take on formidable power blocks in society, and earned much hostility in the process.
He was a big-hearted, warm and generous person, charismatic and mercurial – both wonderful to work with, and at times quite difficult, as you might expect. He was exciting to work for. You never knew when you arrived at the USHP’s home, 8 Newcomen Street, near Borough Market, in the morning (glancing askance as you did so at the army of bowler-hatted men marching across London Bridge on their way to their city offices) what would be happening that day.
What happened often depended on something outrageous Peter had read in the media, the night before or earlier that morning which excited his passion and, in his view, required immediate response. Getting sustained work completed on USHP’s major publications could be difficult, because of the frequent need to craft reactions to anti-health opinions expressed in the media, which could take hours.
Discussion and drafting at lunch time and after work (the timing of which could be very elastic!) often took place over a swift half – or more - in the “other office”, the hostelry across the narrow road which is Newcomen Street.
Peter was an excellent writer with a brilliant use of language, prepared to spend much time on revising and re-revising drafts, and honing prose to the highest possible standard. He could come up with vivid, memorable phrases. One of these was quoted by Joanna Lyall in the BMJ obituary, describing public health as “raising hell to reach heaven”, which I think is wonderful.
My 3 years at USHP shaped the values and principles that have underpinned the rest of my life. It is impossible to overstate their importance for me and therefore my gratitude to Peter … As one small example, a Faculty of Public Health document I co-authored with Lindsey Stewart at the FPH a few years ago, currently sat on my desk awaiting an attempt at revision and re-presentation, is called “Sustaining a Healthy Future”. It is a direct descendant of Rethinking Community Medicine and The NHS in the next 30 years.
Jenny Griffiths

Peter Draper was an extraordinary man. At times infuriating, at others inspirational. Our working together forever changed me and I shall never forget his influence, his passion - or his cigars.
We first met when I came down to the Department of Community Medicine in 1973, for the third year of my first degree, when Peter was working with Tony Smart on the 1974 reorganisation of the NHS. We talked long and hard about the ‘scientific management’ that reorganisation was due to introduce. Peter invited me to consider returning since he was hopeful of establishing a new research unit that looked at health policy. I was delighted to go back.
In 1976 the Unit for the Study of Health Policy was established under Peter’s leadership with an economist, Gordon Best, myself and Pat Bolton. I have only just thrown away the original artwork that we commissioned for our first major publication “Health, Money and the NHS”. That pamphlet and almost all USHP publications were born of many hours of polishing the text trying to ensure that its meaning was unambiguous. We tried very hard to facilitate the informed public discussion of health policy – comprehensible text was essential.
One major new grant saw new co-workers – Jenny Griffiths, James Partridge and Jennie Popay. (I’ll post a picture below of us.) Another saw us joined by Linda Marks, Howard Cox and David St George. Then there were the medical students who joined us on attachment. One of them has written to me “I do remember and very much appreciate his efforts to educate me and to get me published! I produced a rather inept paper on unemployment and health, almost entirely a summary of Harvey Brenner's work. Peter arranged for me to meet the rather baffled editor of the Lancet with a view to writing more! Need I say the meeting did not lead anywhere. I mentioned this to two friends a few years later- a psychiatrist about to take up a chair and a nephrologist. The conversation went along the lines of "you turned down the chance of writing for the Lancet! How could you!" There were two reasons- firstly at the time I didn't quite understand what a big deal this was and how much Peter was putting into this; and secondly my total lack of talent in the area!”
Another of them, Steve Wood,. is sorry he can’t get to the celebration but wrote
“I would like to record my great affection for Peter and my gratitude for all he did to educate me and sophisticate my thinking as an ignorant medical student in the mid 1970s.

I first encountered Peter in 1976 when I embarked on a Sociology BSc course as part of my medical degree. This was the first time that a UK university had offered a medical sociology course, and Peter was one of the principal tutors, together with David Armstrong and Margot Jeffreys. After two years of rote-learning of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, this came as rare and refreshing fruit.
I think Peter and I took to one another almost immediately. We both came from the Manchester area, although he went to a posher school and his background was essentially managerial middle class. Peter seemed to regard his relatively privileged origins as a grave impediment to his acceptance as a radical political thinker. If Peter could have renounced his bourgeois origins as Anthony Wedgewood-Benn renounced his title, I have no doubt he would have done so.
As a medical student I volunteered at USHP during the time that its book on the NHS and the media was produced, and I was privileged to become acquainted with several thinkers who went on to make a significant contribution to the development of the NHS: John Dennis, Gordon Best, Jenny Griffiths, Jenny Popay, James Partridge, and others.
I qualified MB BS in 1979, and thereafter pursued a conventional career in medicine, eventually becoming a consultant psychiatrist and medical director of an NHS Trust.
Peter's influence has never left me. He had a keen sense of social justice, and would step out of line to defend the vulnerable. Once, I was with in an underground station when two policemen wrestled a drunken man down a staircase. Peter immediately stopped them in their tracks, announced that he was a doctor and that they could be causing spinal damage. Such was his authority, they immediately complied!
Peter was also very good fun. He had bipolar affective disorder - which most of his friends recognized before he did. When high, he was full of new ideas, could work twelve hours a day, and was a great pleasure to work with. When low, he was withdrawn and pessimistic.
Peter never abandoned his radicalism. I met up with him only once in later years, when he lived in Greenwich. I attended a sort of soiree which reminded me of Bertie Wooster entertaining Bingo Little, Comrade Butt and the Sons of The Red Dawn. “

I hope that Peter’s influence lives on, I rather suspect it will. At a time when debate about the NHS ignores some of the elephants in the room, political discussion is constrained by an agenda of one leaders unelectability or another’s dress sense and the self-imposed wall of Brexit draws ever closer we need visionaries who can make incisive contributions to public debate. It is our responsibility.

John Dennis

Obituary: Peter Draper
Peter Draper has died, at the age of 83.
A regular contributor to the DFNHS newsletter and a founding light in the organisation, Peter’s contribution to public health and to campaigns defending the principles upon which the NHS was founded would be hard to under-state. His obituary in the Guardian [1] sums this up:
“He was instrumental in creating the study of health policy in the UK and was the country’s outstanding public health practitioner in the second half of the 20th century.”

Several DFNHS members have commented on how the early meetings of the then NHS Consultants’ Association were hosted at Peter’s rooms at Guy’s, London. Tributes to Peter have also included the following:
“In my view he was unquestionably the most important figure in UK public health in the second half of the 20th century. He single-handedly invented health policy and healthy public policy within the UK, and produced a superb series of reports from his Unit for the Study of Health Policy at Guy’s Hospital Medical School.
“Many of us enthusiastically moulded our approach to public health around Peter’s example. A great public health physician.” – Alex Scott-Samuel
“Peter had a nice turn of phrase. In comparing 19th Century and more modern public health threats, he described tobacco and various other forms of advertising as ‘pollution of the thinking water’.” – Professor Mike Daube Professor of Health Policy
“I will remember Peter as a man who continued to campaign for as long as he was fit and able to do so. He always had useful things to say, said with a quiet voice.” – Ron Singer, Doctors in Unite
“He was one of the original members of NHSCA. He was a prolific thinker and writer He was an active member of our Executive Committee for many years and then of KONP, continuing to contribute his thoughts and writings. In later years his activities were curtailed by bi-polar disorder with which he struggled bravely.” – Peter Fisher
Reference [1] https://www.theguardian.com/ society/2016/aug/22/peter-draper-obituary

Details
Peter's funeral took place on Monday 8th August 2016, at Islington Crematorium.

A ceremony to honour the life of Dr Peter Allan Draper
3rd July 1933 – 30th July 2016
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

Led by Rupert Morris Humanist celebrant

Entry Music: Nocturne No 2 in E Flat, by Chopin

Welcome, everyone. We’re here today to honour and celebrate the life of Peter Draper, who died 10 days ago at the age of 83 – peacefully in his own bed. He died, as he had lived, with courage, conviction and love.

Peter was a lifelong humanist, indeed one of the prime movers in the establishment in 1967 of the British Humanist Association, which I now represent as an accredited celebrant. My name is Rupert Morris, and although I didn’t know Peter myself, I have spoken at some length to his wife Carol, daughter Jane, her husband Martin and Carol’s daughter Emma. What I have to say will be based largely on what they have told me. To begin with I’ll speak about Peter’s life before handing over to close friends and family members to talk more personally. We shall hear some carefully chosen pieces of music, then we’ll say our final farewells to Peter, in the knowledge that there will be a memorial service for him, probably in the second half of September.

Our ceremony today is for all of you, whatever your beliefs, humanist, religious or whatever. Later on, when we’ve heard from all our contributors, we will observe a moment of silent reflection, a chance for each of you to remember Peter in your own way, and pray if you wish.

For all the sadness you will be feeling today, this is also a precious opportunity to make sense of Peter’s life, to remind yourselves where he came from, the people and events that influenced him, how he developed his remarkable range of interests, the better to appreciate all that he achieved and all that he has left behind.

Peter Allan Draper was born in Blackburn on 3rd July 1933, the second son of Alan and Mary Draper, members of a well-established family in that part of Lancashire. Peter’s father was the textile engineer and manager at a local textile mill, and Peter was very proud of him, both for the way he managed people and the fact that after the war, he travelled to various third-world countries to help manufacturers develop more efficient techniques for weaving cotton.

Peter enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing, and had fond memories of life at home with Florrie, the maid – sticking up for her rights whenever he felt it was necessary. As a schoolboy he excelled both academically and on the sports field. He was captain of rugby, producer of the school play, and in due course, Head Boy at the Wrekin College. He was complimented on his neatness as a gymnast, but was limited by the fact that, as he recorded in his hand-written autobiography, “my legs were too heavy for my arms to manoeuvre”.

He said he didn’t remember ever having to work hard to achieve top grades in chemistry, whereas he struggled to rise from the bottom of the class in history which was, as he put it, “full of uninteresting facts about royalty and battles”. Here, perhaps, were the first signs of the emergence of Peter’s strong political convictions based on dislike of privilege and inequality – convictions that will surely have been reinforced by his childhood memories of World War II. He was 12 years old when the war came to an end and Attlee’s Labour Party won its great landslide victory.

Peter finished his school education with A levels in Chemistry, Physics, Maths and Biology, but before he could go to Cambridge to read medicine, he had to do his National Service. He chose the RAF and over the course of two years, partly spent in the UK and partly in Canada, he learned to fly many different kinds of aircraft from the Tiger Moth biplane (which he likened to a flying motorbike) to Harvard propeller planes and T33 jets.

In his final year at Cambridge, Peter married a fellow-student, but they were both very young, and the marriage didn’t last long after they graduated. From Cambridge, he went to Manchester to complete his medical studies, and by 1961 he was a member of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons.

Professionally, Peter began to develop his expertise in the areas of community medicine and public health. Coming to London, he met Dorothy, who was working as a nursing sister at the London Hospital, and whom he married. In the early sixties, they settled together in Oxted in Surrey to bring up Nick, born in 1965 and Jane, born in 1968. William the dog completed the family. At home, Peter became ever more enthusiastic about self-sufficiency, growing vegetables of all kinds, composting furiously and shouting “gold” whenever he dug up a potato. As he famously explained in the context of humanism, Peter believed that “this is our world, our responsibility, our possibility” – words that still appear on the BHA’s website today.

He was immensely proud of his children. Jane is with us today, but his son Nick cannot be as he and his wife and three sons are on their way to New Zealand to live.

Through the seventies, Peter continued to build his reputation as one of the country’s leading experts on public health, being one of the first to establish a link between unemployment and health problems. He wrote prolifically, including editorials for the Lancet. He devoted much of his spare time to supporting his local Labour Party as well as the humanist movement.

Arguably the pinnacle of his career was the award of a personal research grant to establish a public health unit at Guy’s Hospital which he managed for five years from the late seventies until he decided to take early retirement – which of course was nothing of the sort, as he continued to work with the NHS Consultants’ Association and remained hugely in demand as one of the leading experts in his field. In 1991 he published 'Health Through Public Policy: The Greening of Public Health'.

By the end of the seventies, Peter had fallen in love again, this time with Marcia Saunders. He and Dorothy divorced in 1980. Peter went to live in Greenwich for several years, driving around London in a green beetle, until he and Marcia moved to Muswell Hill.

After Peter and Marcia had gone their separate ways in the 1990s, Peter met Carol, the final love of his life, at a Labour Party meeting in 1999. Her background as a health service manager and fellow-socialist gave them many shared interests and values. They were married before the end of the year, and soon after the millennium, moved to Highgate, where he discovered all sorts of new enthusiasms, not least for tea-dancing with Carol.

There seems to have been almost no limit to Peter’s interests. From his schooldays onwards, his natural energy and exceptional brain gave him a phenomenal capacity for trying and enjoying different things – reading, writing, medicine, opera, ballet, home-brewing beer, gardening, driving, flying planes, tasting wine, cooking, telling jokes, politics, philosophy.

He applied his considerable research and wordsmithing skills to writing an article for the Highgate Society journal about the number and characteristics of the many Highgate village pubs.

He was a loving and proud grandfather to Holly, Emma, Sam, Mattie and Joe; and step-grandfather to Aimee, Eve and Georgie. He was a caring son-in-law to Carol’s mother May, who mourns his loss.

Now let me hand over to Martin…

Family Tribute from Richard Draper, read by Martin Rice

Now we’re going to pause for a moment and listen to a song by Ewan MacColl called the Joy of Living. Carol has chosen this as Peter’s farewell to his family, as it expresses his family love, his values and his gift for joy. This is a moment for you to remember Peter in your own way.

Time for reflection: Ewan MacColl, The Joy of Living

Personal Words by Tom Davidson

Rupert Morris
We’re approaching the end of our ceremony, and I hope you feel, from all that we have heard today, especially from Martin and Tom, that Peter’s was an exceptional life, truly deserving of celebration.

William Wordsworth wrote an epic poem entitled The Excursion, and I’m going to conclude by quoting just six lines from it.

And when the stream
which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left
Deposited upon the silent shore
of memory; images and precious thoughts
that shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.

In that sense, you have not lost Peter. He is with you now, in your hearts and minds, and no one can take away those “images and precious thoughts” you have of him.

We’re going to leave this chapel to a waltz, by Johann Strauss the younger. When the music has started, would you each like to come up a place a flower on Peter’s coffin – Jane tells me he was always a great lover of flowers and took many photographs of them. When the last flower has been placed, we will close the curtains and commit his body for cremation. Thank you all for coming to honour an exceptional man.

Exit Music: The Artist’s Life, Kunstlerleben Op 316, by Johann Strauss II

Donations
Donations would be appreciated in memory of Peter, to the British Humanist Association.

There is a donation site here on his tribute, or cheques made out to British Humanist Association can be sent to Leverton & Sons, 1 Denmark Terrace, Fortis Green, London N2 9HG.

Please include Peter's name and the funeral date when sending donations by post.

Donations
No flowers please, donations to British Humanist Association

£175.00 inc giftaid was raised for British Humanist Association

I first became aware of Peter’s work with the ‘Health and wealth’ paper, when I was a medical student. It helped me frame a student essay for a prize with one of the medical newspapers at the time, and set a slow burning fuse which would later fire me to a life in public health. I communicated with Peter from afar, about the miner’s strike and the politics of health and was pleased to be able to respond to his rallying cry for the Public Health Alliance with Alex. Through the PHA I worked with Peter on the groundbreaking crime and health project and the sustainable development report. Our paths parted somewhat in more recent years, although I was able to say hello back in 2013 at the relaunch of MEDACT. Peter was a visionary but never with his head in the clouds. Gently spoken but arrowing in on the hard analysis and always with concern for ordinary people at heart.
Once again my condolences. Peter left a lasting mark on the people around him and those he worked with, and not least, for the health of the people we serve.

Professor John Middleton, President UK Faculty of Public Health

I worked as Peter's secretary in community medicine and helped him to start the unit for the study of health policy in Newcomen Street with Gordon Best, John and also Jenny Griffiths. I have many great memories of Peter and he work. He will be sadly missed. RIP Peter xxx

Mrs Pat Bolton