The same recommendation lands very differently in a well-equipped borough than in an under-served one. Across London’s 32 boroughs, the divergence in healthy life expectancy tracks, in part, a divergence in the physical capacity of the care system — the diagnostics a surgery can run, the same-day capacity of an urgent centre, the reach of community teams.
Closing the gap is rarely about a single headline investment. It is about the quiet, compounding question of which boroughs can see, test and treat closer to home — and which still refer their residents onward, later, and at greater cost.