Week 6-Health Challenges of Ageing Flashcards
What is the general trend of life expectancy across the globe? (Murray et al., 2015)
-Since 1990, there has been an increase in healthy life expectancy up to 2013 similar across most countries.
-There’s also been an increase in additional years of ill health.
What are some factors which affect longevity?
Genetic factors
Environmental factors
Disease
Toxins
Lifestyle
Social class (Health inequalities)
Ethnic differences
Gender differences Women have nearly a seven year edge over men. Why?
International differences
How does life expectancy differ by country?
-There is a lot of countries in Africa with a red zone life expectancy (47-54 years).
-Areas such as America, Europe and Australia, have a blue zone life expectancy (78-83 years).
-These discrepancies are likely due to the different level of impact these factors have
What is the trend for life expectancy across the years?
-The graph shows the % of people in each country who live to 65 or above.
-From 2020 to 2050, it is likely we will see a shift where more countries will have a 15.01% or more of individuals aged 65+
-However, areas such as Africa are still disadvantaged with countries differing between 0.01% to 10% of individuals aged 65+
-There seems to be a general trend of increased life expectancy across various parts of the world.
-In urban populations, the rate of life expectancy is much higher but only within these populations and not others.
What is the social determinants of health model? (Dahlgren & Whitehead, 1991)
- At the core of the model we have personal characteristics e.g., age, sex and constitutional factors such as ethnicity and genetics which could impact our health.
- Individual lifestyle factors: our personal choices in life e.g., diet, drug use etc.,
- Social and community networks: relationships with family, friends, wider community (social isolation and loneliness is associated with poor health outcomes)
- Access to living and working conditions: work environment, education, agriculture and food production, unemployment, water and sanitation, health care services and housing
- General socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions: government policies, air quality and air pollution etc.,
What is a health inequality?
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
What is one of the core principles set by the NHS? (1944)
“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” (i.e., everyone should have good quality medical care regardless of their background)
What’s the health-related consequences of
Brexit?
- Rights of pensioners
- Peace
- Public Health
- The environment and climate change
- Agriculture food and nutrition
- Social dimensions
- Regional policy
- The Single Market
- Free movement of health professionals around the EU
- Standardised medicines approval
- International influence on medicines and devices regulation
- UK research excellence and access to research funding
What’s the background bit?
-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
Why is exploring the social determinants
of health important?
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’
What’s the inverse care law? (Lancet, 1971)
“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.“
What are causes of health inequalities?
-Chicken or the egg
-Resource explanation (limited amount of money and resources and is distributed unevenly)
-Cultural explanation (health inequalities occurs in certain groups)
-Social capital (some people may have better social support systems than other people)
Health Challenges- employment and income
“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)
Examining physical health & barriers to ageing well
Conditions:
Obesity
Arthritis
Falls
Cancer
CVD
Stroke
Vision/ Hearing loss
Dental Health
Memory
Things to look into:
-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
Dental health – Access
Social Gradient in Oral Health (source, Watt and Sheiham (2012)
-There is a significant positive association between occupational and socioeconomic position with dental health
-One of the main contributors to dental decay is the high and frequent consumption of sugary foods
-Those with lower socioeconomic status tend to consume more sugary foods (perhaps because of the affordability of healthy foods or lack of education on the risks with high sugar consumption)
-The consumption of smoking and drinking also results in a risk of poor oral health and even oral cancer
