UK will miss healthy ageing targets without urgent action, inquiry concludes
BMJ 2021; 372 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n125 (Published 15 January 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;372:n125The UK government will miss key targets to improve healthy ageing unless it acts now to tackle “stark” inequalities in healthy life expectancy, a House of Lords inquiry has concluded.1
In a report published on 15 January the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee concluded that new science had the potential to delay the onset of age related disease and improve healthy ageing to the benefit of individuals, the NHS, and society. But while it noted that the UK was a world leader in drug development and in technologies, with promising advances, the inquiry found that this had yet to translate into sufficient progress in terms of keeping people healthy as they aged.
A crucial measure of progress will be reducing “shockingly large differences in healthy life expectancy amongst ethnic groups” and in the most deprived groups, who spend almost 20 years longer in poor health than the least deprived, the report said.
In the past 10 years healthy life expectancy at birth has fallen among women, while improvement among men has slowed.
The government’s key targets to ensure that people had five extra healthy years of life by 2035 and to narrow the gap between the experience of the richest and the poorest people would not be met without urgent action, the inquiry concluded.
Ministers should produce a road map on how to achieve the five extra healthy years target, and report annually on its progress, and should set out a clear plan for reducing health inequalities over the next parliament, it said. Current messages on healthy living were not effective enough, and more targeted public health advice and interventions were needed early in life and throughout it, the report added.
To reflect rising multimorbidity, the NHS should develop clearer and more integrated care pathways, with each older person assigned a designated clinician who would oversee their whole care, the report said. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency should ensure that older people were more often included in clinical trials and should show greater willingness to approve trials that targeted multiple conditions, it added.
And, noting the potential of new treatments and repurposing of drugs to delay the onset of age related diseases, it advised the government to commit more funding to further research into the biological processes underlying ageing and to prioritise research to identify accurate biomarkers of ageing in humans.
The government should also make strategic investments in research in artificial intelligence, emerging robotics, and data driven technologies, as these areas had potential to improve healthier and independent living in old age, the report added.
Narendra Patel, chair of the Science and Technology Committee, said, “The committee found that the government needs to urgently address the key issues of reducing health inequalities, implementing health system reforms, and promoting lifestyle changes.
“The government must therefore act now to increase support for the exciting new scientific research that targets the underlying processes of ageing. Treatments are being developed that could improve health without the need to treat multiple separate illnesses. Furthermore, technologies can be better utilised to help people live independently for longer.”