The seeds of Hope Citadel Healthcare began when a young third year medical student was sitting in a lecture and first heard about the inverse care law put forward by Tudor Hart in 1971 which reads:

“The availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served.”

“This cannot be true” the student thought. The tutor reassured the class that the statement was true and becoming more true by the day as inequality continued to increase.

The student was part of a church project and lived in an area government departments called “deprived” and socio-economic graphs showed that this area was “low” (bottom 5%) or very low (bottom 2.5%). Local people described it using other colourful words. Over the next few months as the student chatted with friends and local people it became clear that local people were finding it difficult to access the medical care they needed in a timely and appropriate way. On digging deeper it was found that the area had significantly fewer GPs for the population than in wealthier areas nearby and access to the GPs they did have was significantly lower, were open less often and were less qualified. This meant that the circle of ill-health, and often chaos which comes along with it, was only continuing and it was very difficult for patients to see improvements.

The student decided to try and do something and with a team of like minded GPs and colleagues, Hope Citadel Healthcare was set up.