DURING the last year our relationship with family doctors has changed. Even early on in the pandemic there were some signs that people stayed away from visiting their GP during lockdown. This prompted concern from many doctors who asked people not to suffer in silence or let concerns grow.

A good relationship with your GP can be key to wider health awareness and positive outcomes, which is why I think family doctors have a major role to play in recovering our NHS after the pandemic.

As well as catching up with any backlog, doctors are busy with their role in distributing the vaccine. It’s important that we recognise the crucial role GPs are playing and make sure they have adequate funding and staffing to deliver it.

I have been concerned for some time about the fact that, even though 90% of patient contacts are with primary care, general practice receives less than 10% of the NHS Scotland budget. I led an opposition debate in Holyrood in 2019 that saw Parliament agree that the figure should be 11% of NHS funding, which is what the Royal College of General Practitioners have called for in their 2021 manifesto.

This makes sense because those who are on the frontline in communities, such as GPs, are well-placed to tackle health inequalities and deliver preventative healthcare. The Scottish Greens will look to increase the time consultations with GPs take so that these conversations can take a more holistic approach. This is what GPs want and what would help patients, but it means managing capacity.

It’s clear that we need to build up the general practice workforce to ensure that GPs and the wider practice team can offer a minimum of 15 minutes for appointments as standard, with an appropriate mix of face-to-face, phone and virtual consultations.

We have seen an increasing number of pharmacists and physios becoming part of the primary care team, and that is to be welcomed. I would like to see that team widened.

There’s no doubt that poverty and the UK’s austerity economics have contributed to Scotland’s health inequalities. Financial health is absolutely linked to physical and mental health.

As the Scottish Green spokesperson for social security I’ve been very concerned about how much support is out there for people that simply doesn’t get taken up because people feel discouraged from applying. Often people don’t even know that particular support exists. As Scotland’s devolved benefits come online, making everyone who is entitled to them aware will be a challenge.

That’s why the Scottish Greens want to see welfare rights officers as part of practice teams, making sure everyone has access to the support they need so they can live healthier and happier lives.

And while it is far too early to understand the huge impact the last year has had on our mental health, it’s clear that more must be done to integrate mental health services to ensure they have parity of esteem with services to boost physical health.

As part of our plans to allocate 10% of frontline health spend to mental health by 2026, the Scottish Greens would place mental health clinicians into GP practices. I believe this direct contact with mental health professionals would have the potential to save lives and expand access to remedies like cognitive behavioural therapy and social prescribing – where a doctor can say that physical activity or a hobby might be more appropriate than a drugs prescription.

We also need to prioritise support for children and young people, who even before the pandemic were waiting far too long for mental health treatments. Greens would invest an additional £161 million into child and adolescent mental health services so they can meet demand, but we should also look much more seriously at prevention.

The Scottish Greens have already been working on making sure personal and social education in schools has a greater focus on mental health and have expanded the curriculum to cover topics such as consent-based sex education and LGBT inclusivity. We can build on this work to make sure schools are focused on wellbeing.

Prevention is also about understanding what leads to a healthier lifestyle. It is about ensuring that our communities have access to safe streets and green spaces, that they are encouraged and supported to be active and eat well. To create such communities we need our economy to be focused on wellbeing, not just economic growth.

We need to use this moment we find ourselves in, emerging from the biggest public health emergency in living memory, to reassess our priorities and create a healthier, fairer, greener Scotland.

When you look at Scotland’s persistent health challenges, and the inequalities which have persisted for decades, to go back to how things were would be unthinkable. That’s why we are asking people to vote like our future depends on it.