What is prevention? 

We all know ‘prevention is better than cure’. Prevention is at the heart of the Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015, being one of the statutory ways of working public bodies must apply in Wales. 

It means acting early to stop problems from happening, or from getting worse, rather than waiting until people, communities, public services or the environment are already in crisis or with an immediate need to be met. It is about considering how it can help public bodies under the WFG Act to meet their well-being objectives and to improve the economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales. 

Prevention goes beyond healthcare. It can be about preventing the many challenges and problems that affect the well-being of both people and places. It can include for example preventing poverty, ill health, homelessness, biodiversity loss, climate change, unemployment, social isolation.  

It is also about preventing problems for our future generations at the same time. 

An agreed definition of prevention

Early on after the creation of the office, the commissioner and Welsh Government agreed in 2017 the definition of prevention designed to work across the whole public sector.  

It was a priority for Future Generations Cymru because there is a multitude of definitions of prevention leading to confusion and inaction. Some are also sector specific and we wanted a universal definition.

Having one shared definition across Wales helps us to: 

• Speak the same language about what we mean by prevention across sector and professions. 
• It can apply equally to understanding activity, policy intentions and targets as well as budget mapping.
• See where public money is going, from preventing problems in the first place to responding when they become acute. 
• Understand the type of action we take to prevent challenges and assess whether it was most effective. 
• Spot opportunities to act earlier, before problems become more serious and costlier. 
• Compare and learn across different organisations, sectors and public services. 
• Make better long-term decisions about where to act or invest resources. 
• Track progress over time and understand whether we are genuinely moving towards prevention.

The key idea: the further upstream we can act, the greater the opportunity to prevent harm, reduce costs and reduce future demand rather than repeatedly responding once problems have become severe.

This is why our Future Generations Report 2025 recommends that public bodies map their preventative spending and progressively invest more upstream towards primary prevention and takes placed-based approaches to prevention around the wider determinants of health (the conditions that keep us healthy).

Why prevention matters? 

Prevention is about the Wales we want to create.

Prevention is not an option in Wales. It is a core part of the Well-being of Future Generations Act.  

Prevention is particularly important in the current context as public services face increasing pressures. Responding to immediate needs will always be important, but continually dealing with crises without addressing their causes is not sustainable. The Well-being of Wales report shows year after year that we must act better and faster.

“Why treat people and send them back to the conditions that made them sick?”  – Sir Michael Marmot

The prevention way of working aims to address some common public sector challenges such as reactive decision-making, which fails to consider the causes of challenges; and siloed decisions taken without looking at the whole system that surrounds them. 

It aims instead to shift us to a system where public services better understand the underlying causes of the problems and take action to improve those causes early on without waiting for a crisis to occur.  

Positively, the conversation in Wales has shifted from ‘do we need to invest in prevention’ to ‘how can we best invest in prevention and where can we find the funding?’ 

As our Future Generations Report 2025 has shown, there is a wide consensus in Wales about the importance and value of prevention but day to day activity remains focussed on acute problems in all sectors.  

Prevention makes sense on every level. It is morally right because it avoids unnecessary suffering. It makes financial sense because preventing problems is better and cheaper than continually paying for their consequences. And it is fairer, because it tackles inequalities earlier. Prevention is, ultimately, an investment in both today’s population and future generations. 

Questions to ask about prevention

When looking at your own work, consider:

1. What problem or challenge is your work trying to prevent in the future?
2. What are the root causes your work could help to address?
3. How can your work help with the breaking of negative cycles and/or intergenerational challenges and future trends, such as poverty, poor health, environmental damage and loss of biodiversity?
4. Is your work about primary, secondary or tertiary prevention? Could you act earlier or further upstream?
5. What are the risks of not doing the work in terms of creating new problems or letting existing ones get worse?
6. Who needs to be involved in help you design the solution?
7. Does our investment reflect our ambition to prevent the problem?