About The Skin Well™ Project

How The Skin Well™ Came to Be: A Quiet Call to Include Skin

The Skin Well™ began with a practical idea: a series of 12 leaflets to help clients understand how lifestyle and environmental factors can affect their skin.

The decision was made to make those resources public. If someone stumbled across them and found them useful, so much the better.

But in the process of writing those leaflets, something became clear: skin was missing. Not in expert research, but in national health messaging. The NHS and Department of Health and Social Care mention benefits like better sleep, heart health, and mood—but rarely skin, beyond sun advice and skin cancer.

So The Skin Well™ started looking more closely. And discovered that although experts clearly link skin health to factors like stress, nutrition, sleep, and air quality, these links aren’t recognised nationally. They’re not part of how we’re encouraged to think about—or care for—our health.

And that raised a quiet but important question: Why?

Skin is the body’s largest organ. It connects with every system. It’s our first line of defence. It’s the only organ directly exposed to the outside world—and the only one that visibly shows stress or imbalance, often instantly. And yet, it has been almost entirely left out of national conversations about wellbeing.

So The Skin Well™ began to take shape: a quiet call to simply include skin.

Not in a radical way. Just to name it—as one of the signs, symptoms, or benefits in the lifestyle and environmental advice people already receive.

As the work unfolded, more gaps became visible:

• In education—where skin is mentioned in hygiene lessons, but not as a sign of health.

• In vocational training—where skin therapists are taught through beauty frameworks, not health ones.

• In government departments—where skin is affected by housing, pollution, employment, and stress, but rarely acknowledged.

• In public health communication—where apps and campaigns track nearly every other organ… except the skin.

This led to a clearer sense of what needs to shift.

At the heart of The Skin Well™ are three key asks:

1. That skin is recognised as a national health issue—not only in disease, but in prevention, care, and public messaging.

2. That education is shaped by this recognition—with the Department of Health and Social Care involved in setting training standards for those working with skin.

3. That the titles ‘skin therapist’ and ‘beauty therapist’ are protected by law—and that qualified professionals are recognised within the health system as key contributors to preventative care, accurate advice, and wider public wellbeing.

These asks now guide every part of the project—from leaflets and checklists to quiet scenarios and open letters. They're not radical. But they are necessary. And long overdue.

And while The Skin Well™ began as a UK-wide curiosity, the project now focuses on England—recognising that health, education, and regulation are devolved. At the same time, skin health is skin health wherever you are in the world. Globally, skin is still viewed mainly through the lens of disease. But maybe it’s time to widen that lens.

Phase 1 is now complete, and work has quietly commenced on Phase 2. Further details will follow as this next stage unfolds.