Harrogate Cure joins NHS conversation on the future of health and place

Harrogate Cure was delighted to take part in the teamHDFT Conference at Pavilions of Harrogate, held as part of Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust’s celebration of 200 years of healthcare in the town.

The conference brought together colleagues from across the NHS and its wider network to explore the future of healthcare, patient care, workforce, sustainability and the green agenda.

The day opened with Professor Jackie Andrews, Medical Director and Deputy Chief Executive of HDFT, tracing the story of Harrogate Cure from William Slingsby’s discovery of the mineral spring in 1571 through to the development of the town as a place founded on health and wellbeing.

Over the centuries, the Cure grew into a preventative and holistic healthcare ecosystem. It brought together water, landscape, fresh air, sunlight, movement, food, culture, rest, medicine and social life, all working in relationship to support health, recovery and wellbeing.

This system shaped Harrogate through the 19th and early 20th centuries. It influenced the town’s institutions, architecture, parks, gardens, daily routines and wider sense of purpose.

After the Second World War, many of those relationships gradually fragmented. Healthcare became increasingly centred on clinical treatment, while the wider connections between medicine, landscape, movement, nourishment, culture, community and prevention became less visible.

The work today is to draw these relationships back together and explore how it can function within a contemporary context. That means looking again at the relationships between water, nature, sunlight, movement, food, beauty, culture, rest, belonging and care. It also means considering how these can work alongside modern medicine, the NHS, local healthcare and care providers, community organisations, civic institutions and environmental partners.

At the conference, we took part in a panel discussion on the NHS Green Plan and Sustainability, exploring how healthcare organisations can collaborate more closely with local communities, businesses, public bodies and local initiatives.

The discussion brought together perspectives from sustainable procurement, energy, estates, infrastructure and community climate action. It also opened a wider conversation about the relationship between health, place and sustainability, and the role of institutions such as the NHS beyond the boundaries of their own buildings and services.

Health is not created by clinical services alone. It is also shaped by the places in which we live, the landscapes we can access, the food we grow and eat, the ways we move, the strength of our communities, and our connection to culture, nature and one another.

Harrogate Cure is developing a framework through which these different elements can once again work as a coherent, place-based system of preventative and holistic healthcare.

The panel discussion marked the beginning of a positive conversation with Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust about how Harrogate Cure can work more closely with healthcare and care providers across the town.

This could include stronger connections between healthcare, green social prescribing, cultural activity, community growing, active travel, nature recovery, staff wellbeing and Harrogate’s distinctive landscape.

It also creates an opportunity to develop parallel infrastructures of health across Harrogate. Clinical services remain central, while landscape, culture, communities and local organisations help create the wider conditions in which people can live well, recover and remain connected.

As Harrogate reflects on two centuries of organised healthcare, there is a pioneering opportunity to bring these relationships back into focus and shape the next chapter of Harrogate Cure.