What we say about… Healthy ageing
Healthy ageing ·
Position statements
| 29 September 2023
Our key messages
- The proportion of older adults in the UK is projected to reach 24.7% by 2049 – this will bring benefits as well as challenges.
- A whole system approach is needed to support older adults to remain independent and healthy.
- A renewed focus is needed on prevention across the life course to support people to age healthily and to delay or prevent the onset of long-term conditions.
- Public health should promote the importance of ageing well and highlight the contribution and skills of older people.
Our national recommendations
- The social care funding system should be reformed with a focus on prevention to deliver the care and support older people deserve.
- More positive rhetoric is needed when discussing ageing to avoid negative stereotyping around older people and their abilities.
- The NHS should ensure that prevention forms a key part of its plans to ensure good health and reduce long-term conditions in old age.
- Addressing loneliness should be considered as a preventative measure in shifting from acute and long-term care to self-help and support in communities.
- Governments across the four nations should work with businesses to support the ageing workforce through training and learning.
- A more strategic approach is needed to deliver appropriate housing provision for the ageing population.
- Transport systems need to be future proofed to ensure they are appropriate for the ageing population.
- Governments across the four nations should invest in the prevention of the modifiable risk factors identified in the Lancet Commission to help to reduce cases of dementia.
- Public health should promote the importance of ageing well and highlight the contribution and skills of older people
Our local recommendations
- Effective integration of health and social care services and a whole system, place-based approach should be adopted to improve older people’s health and wellbeing.
- Local pathways for older people’s health and wellbeing should not just focus on ways to reduce emergency admissions and demand but focus on the wellbeing of older people.
- Local public health authorities should consider the needs of older people when implementing NICE Guidance NG90 on physical activity and the environment to encourage them to adopt an active lifestyle.
- Local public health authorities, healthcare professionals and social workers should use Making Every Contact Count and opportunistic interventions to engage with older people around health and wellbeing.
- Local public health authorities should continue to deliver targeted interventions around fuel poverty.
- Local public health authorities should work with hospitals and the voluntary and community sector (VCS) to tackle malnourishment of older people in the community.
- The VCS should be supported to scale up evidence-based interventions such as social prescribing to tackle loneliness.