Week 6-Health Challenges of Ageing

Question 1

Slide 4

Question 2

Slide 5

Question 3

Slide 6

Question 4

Slide 7

Question 5

Slide 8

Question 6

What is a health inequality?

Answer 6

Between countries:
-The infant mortality rate is 2/1000 live births in Iceland & over 120/1000 in Mozambique
-The lifetime risk of maternal death during or shortly after pregnancy is only 1/17400 in Sweden but 1/8 in Afghanistan

Within countries:
-Life expectancy for men in the Calton neighbourhood in Glasgow is 54 years old, 28 years less than men living a few
miles away in Lenzie

-The prevalence of long term disabilities in European men aged over 80 years old is 58.8% amongst the lower educated, compared to 40.2% in the highest educated

Question 7

What did the NHS say? (1944)

Answer 7

“One of the fundamental principles of the
National Health Service is to divorce
the care of health from questions of
personal means or other factors irrelevant to it”

Question 8

Slide 11

Question 9

Slide 12

Question 10

Slide 13

Question 11

What’s the health-related consequences of
Brexit?

Answer 11

1. Rights of pensioners
2. Peace
3. Public Health
4. The environment and climate change
5. Agriculture food and nutrition
6. Social dimensions
7. Regional policy
8. The Single Market
9. Free movement of health professionals around the EU
10. Standardised medicines approval
11. International influence on medicines and devices regulation
12. UK research excellence and access to research funding

Question 12

Slide 15

Question 13

Slide 16

Question 14

What’s the The background bit?

Answer 14

-Two pivotal independent UK health inquiries, the Acheson and Black reports
helped generate extensive debate on inequalities in health, informing policy and
action.

Whilst an individual has no control over his or her age, sex and genetics, wider determinants of health can affect the likelihood of a person developing a disease,
or in dying prematurely. Such determinants of health include:
1. Individual lifestyle factors: e.g. diet, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, drugs,
behaviour
2. Social and community factors: e.g. crime, unemployment, social exclusion, local
cultures
3. Living and working conditions: e.g. housing, education and health systems
4. General socio-economic factors impacting on health: e.g. poverty, income and
economy

Question 15

Why is exploring the social determinants
of health important?

Answer 15

Health equity is when everyone has the opportunity to ‘attain their full health potential’ and no one is ‘disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of
their social position or other socially determined circumstance’

Question 16

What’s the inverse care law? (Lancet, 1971)

Answer 16

“In areas with most sickness and death, general practitioners have more work, larger lists, less hospital support and inherit more clinically ineffective traditions of consultation than in the healthiest areas; and hospital doctors shoulder heavier case-loads with less staff and equipment, more buildings and suffer recurrent crises in the
availability of beds and replacement staff. These trends can be summed up as the inverse care law: that the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need of the population served.“

Question 17

Slide 20

Question 18

What are causes of health inequalities?

Answer 18

-Chicken or the egg

-Resource explanation

-Cultural explanation

-Social capital

Question 19

Health Challenges- employment and income

Answer 19

“Over the period 1998 – 2007, the unemployment rate declined by 1.3 percentage points. Each 1% decline in unemployment in an area was associated
with an additional 2.2 months of male and 1.7 months of female life expectancy.”

During the same period average household income increased by £2815 per year. Each increase of £1000 in household income in an area was associated with an additional 1.4 months of male and 1.1 months of
female life expectancy”. (BB & DTR)

Question 20

Examining physical health & barriers to ageing well

Answer 20

Obesity
Arthritis
Falls
Cancer
CVD
Stroke
Vision/ Hearing loss
Dental Health
Memory

-Prevalence increasing due to availability,
marketing etc.

-Epidemiological data

-Patient perspective literature

-Psychological changes/challenges

-Health promotion- protective factors
Access to services

-Each of the conditions on the left, could be
examined in terms of the topics above

Question 21

Dental health – Access

Answer 21

Social Gradient in Oral Health (source, Watt and Sheiham (2012)

Question 22

Slide 26

Question 23

Slide 27

Question 24

Slide 28

Question 25

1) New ways of looking at aging

Answer 25

A four-stage system for characterizing aging
in terms of chronological age, functional
status/disease burden, and life expectancy.

Question 26

(2) Resilience and social connectedness/isolation

Answer 26

Resilience and social connectedness have become major themes in understanding how older adults have managed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is a growing literature on the association of social isolation with a myriad of poor health outcomes, especially among the older population.

Question 27

(3) The power of intergenerational
relationships

Answer 27

Attention to social connectedness has led to a renewed interest in intergenerational research. In their opinion piece, Wong et al. make the argument that the involvement of younger people is essential to achieving healthy aging for all.

They advocate for innovative intergenerational programs, education about aging to disrupt aging stereotypes, and participatory involvement of youth.

This new vision will help create a new social contract between young and old to better
address the Decade of Healthy aging’s four action areas to change perceptions of age and aging, foster age-friendly environments, deliver age-responsive care, and provide quality long-term care.

Question 28

(4) Physical activity and built
environment

Answer 28

Lifestyle factors and the built environment have been key factors associated with healthy aging, especially physical activity.