Once upon a time, there were Five Giants.

They ran wild and terrorised the people. This isn’t a fairytale. Yet the story can have a happy ending, with your help.

So who are the Five Giants? They first came to public attention in the Beveridge Report, yet their existence has been known by doctors for many years. The Five Giants are also called the social determinants of health. In other words, any run-ins people have with the Five Giants are likely to shorten their lives. The Five Giants also like to attack people together. For example, people who develop a health issue and have to stop work will be unemployed. With less money coming in, they and their children will experience poverty. This leads to becoming vulnerably housed or even homeless. This leads to having to move home a lot, leading to their children’s education being disrupted by having to move schools, leading to their children having fewer qualifications, not being able to get good jobs, and having to continue living in poverty.

The Five Giants Foundation is a new people powered think tank.

We will bring together frontline workers, service users and senior leaders, in order to understand the new faces of the Five Giants in a modern world. How can we best tackle the issues that have taken root again during austerity, at source, in the most cost effective way? By rooting ourselves in practice, we will be able to rediscover the common sense held by welfare state founders including Nye Bevan and Jim Griffiths. Much of their design for the welfare state in 1948 came from experiments over the previous century which proved what works to prevent ill health, early disability and early death. Early deaths are on the rise again for the first time since 1948. Now is the time for us as a society to rediscover this learning and use it to tackle early death today.

And that work must start today. We are asking you, directly, what will YOU do to help eradicate the Five Giants?

Join us now by using the form below. We'll send you updates on our work and how you can get involved.