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Goodwood Health Summit 2024 Recap

24th September 2024

The second annual Goodwood Health Summit presented by Randox focussed on 'The Microbiome, Infant Feeding & the First Five Years'. Her Grace the Duchess of Richmond, a long-standing and prominent health campaigner invited six world-leading experts to address the Summit in three sessions hosted by broadcaster, journalist and psychologist Sian Williams.

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In the first session, entitled 'understanding the infant microbiome and the role of good nutrition in child development,' Dr James Kinross said that our improved understanding of the human microbiome explains what we have always known to be true about the power of breastfeeding. For Kinross, a world-leading authority on the microbiome, it is the 'missing link' in the breastfeeding story: with brezst milk 'the ultimate personal nutritional strategy' and a 'very, very' powerful determinant of the health of the microbiome in later life.  The greatest gift of the microbiome is in its ability to prevent disease, he said, and a health microbiome is 'a fundamental human right.' But our internal ecosystems are losing their biodiversity at an alarming rate, and the rise in non-communicable diseases is the result.

Dr Vicky Sibson is Director of First Steps Nutrition, the independent public health nutrition charity supporting eating well from pre-conception to five years. She agreed that the new understanding of the microbiome shines a light on early years development and its significance in preventing later ill-health. Understanding these issues at the micro - or microbial - level helps at the macro level too, when talking to legislators, educators and directly to families. Public policy should support women to achieve their breastfeeding goals, she said, but significant social and economic barriers to breastfeeding would still remain. She gave the Summit the memorable description of most infant food as being either 'smooth mush or melty nothingness', and castigated the 'insidious' marketing of formula. It is within the power of politicians to fix that, she said, and one specific solution would be to adopt the World Health Organisation's Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes as UK law.

The second session examined the challenges facing new parents in understanding pregnancy and birth decisions, and the question of UPFs in baby food. Professor Louise Kenny, leader of the ground-breaking C-GULL birth cohort study at the University of Liverpool, opened the session by telling delegates that everyone interacts with pregnancy even if it's only once in their life. It is not just a women's health issue and not just limited to the period of pregnancy, yet a medical establishment led by white, middle-class and middle-aged men systemically undervalues the health of children and mothers. The influential Barker hypothesis on the importance of the first thousand days of life may be explained by our improved understanding of the microbiome, she said, and any intervention after that may just be 'nudging the dial'. Further, we need to talk about women's health before conception, and to address the marked socio-economic inequalities she still sees in her home city of Liverpool. Lifting mothers and children out of poverty would be the biggest public health intervention we could make. Politicians have to look beyond five-year election cycles, she said: it could be 15 or 50 years before we see the benefit of investment in early-years development.

Dr Chris van Tulleken, the BAFTA-winning broadcaster, doctor and Associate Professor at UCL, said that investing £1 in better health in the first thousand days yields a bigger return than at any other stage, yet we spend most of our health budgets at the other end of life. The UK remains a 'formula culture', he said, with an 'oligopoly' of formula producers. Academic research is biased by being funded by such companies, and he echoed the debate in the first session, urging the adoption the WHO code as UK law.

From the floor, Jess Brown-Fuller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Chichester pledged to work to re-establish the All-Party Parliamentary Group on infant feeding and inequality. Van Tulleken said that investment in early-years health was not a charitable decision but an economic one. There is cause for optimism, he said, but we need to think in revolutionary terms.

The third session was a Q&A, with questions from delegates and the online audience. The four panellists were joined by Stephanie Moore and Gabrielle Palmer, author of the seminal 1988 book The Politics of Breastfeeding.

Answering a question on the value of breastfeeding support schemes, Professor Kenny said that such support is the major contributing factor to continuing breastfeeding, but it is costly. Financially it makes sense in the long term, but that message isn't coming through to those who make decisions.

In response to a question on the role of artificial intelligence in understanding the human microbiome, she said that it will be transformational across medicine as an aid to analysis, but that we should not analyse the microbiome in isolation. Many other factors such as the environment and genetics have a part to play. Stephanie Moore agreed, adding that there was still no definition of the ideal microbiome, and that any such definition was still a long way off.

Answering a question on school meals, Vicky said that there is a crisis in sustainability of school food. The budget per meal has remained almost the same in absolute terms over the past 10 years, and that contract caterers cut both corners and nutrition.

Reflecting on her long and hugely influential career, Gabrielle said she had thought that things had got worse since she retired, but that she was 'very cheered up' by the discussion at the Summit. There was hope, she said.  

- Ben Oliver

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