Building on our annual conference on healthy ageing in 2012, the College of Medicine convened a round table on healthy ageing hosted by Lord Walton.
Active and healthy ageing is a societal challenge shared by all European countries. An aim of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing is to find ways to add an average of two healthy life years for each European by 2020.
In the UK too there is an ageing demographic who suffer an ever-increasing burden of long-term chronic conditions, so the need to ensure people are in good health when they reach old age is pressing.
Reflecting on an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report, ‘Never too early: tackling chronic diseases to extend healthy life years’, the aim of the roundtable is to seek to provide some of the answers to ‘the quest for healthy ageing’ in the UK.
The discussion focuses on what policy levers within the new NHS should be used to promote an approach that will make it more likely people will reach old age in good health, whilst providing recommendations for policy makers and commissioners.
