Life Expectancy
A review of recent trends in mortality in England found that inequality in life expectancy has widened. Improvement in life expectancy has been slower in more deprived areas than the less deprived areas of England. Concerningly, among the large EU countries, the UK has had the slowest rate of life expectancy improvement since 2011.
Last year, the UK government set an ambition to increase healthy life expectancy by at least five years by 2035 for England, and to reduce the gap in life expectancy between the richest and the poorest. This Lancet article describes a set of policies that could help achieve this ambition in England.
Home Care
Home care is an essential aspect of ‘ageing in place’, for example enabling older people to receive help with washing or dressing. The King's Fund published a report highlighting that home care continues to be commissioned on a ‘time and task’ basis rather than with a view to health and care outcomes.
Physical Activity
Older people are more likely to experience physical or mental health conditions than people of other ages. Findings from this Demos report highlight the scale of the UK’s inactivity problem. Public Health England recently published a guide to interventions that can be made by pharmacy teams on issues from falls prevention to mental health in order to improve quality of life for older people.
Physical activity is not only significant for a person’s wellbeing but is also important for maintaining strength and balance in later life. In February, we published a report on community-based strength and balance programmes targeting all older adults.
One new study brings worrying news for older adults who watch the television for long durations. It found that watching television for more than 3.5 hours per day is associated with a cognitive decline. But while too much television viewing can be harmful, music helps to enrich a person’s later life, according to this study.
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