The Health Summary started out as The Times Health Supplement in 1981 but was throttled by Rupert Murdoch. It suffered a difficult revival under Robert Maxwell. Eventually its founding editor, Jill Turner, chose the most important and most thoughtful pieces that would not appear elsewhere and put them into The Health Summary.
For 22 years she has been writing, editing and publishing The Health Summary – 24 A4 pages each month of serious briefing paper – developments in health and health policy, read by and largely written by chairmen, chief executives and doctors in health authorities and trusts, and by anyone else able to join in the debate.
From the new year subscribers will be able to download and print a PDF of the issue, allowing readers from other countries easy access. Increasingly, health issues are international and THS is conscious of, and more interested in, the real and pressing health needs of poorer countries. Often young people have a clarity of value that shames us all. THS has a noble tradition of putting subjects on the agenda.
The possibilities of a website are endless – feedback, a forum, a blog, a youth forum, cartoons, comment, personal observations, guest editing, special issues, and we expect to explore them all.