Life expectancy is increasing, but Healthy Life Expectancy has stalled at 61 years.
The eighth report from the Healthy Ageing: Physical Activity in an Ageing Society sessions states government needs to:
- Embed routine conversations about physical activity as a core part of clinical practice.
- Commission evidence-based exercise programmes to reverse frailty, reduce falls and help prevent or delay dementia.
- Make better use of leisure and physical activity infrastructure and workforce to deliver care closer to where older people live…
- Recognise social prescribing as a core mechanism for increasing physical activity and expand support and resources…
- Use its reform of the social care system to address the high levels of physical inactivity…
- Launch a national movement campaign — focused on those approaching retirement and the least active…
- Embed active design principles into planning guidance…
- Act across government to remove the policy, funding and accountability barriers that have led to inactivity being designed into daily life, particularly for older people (…poorly paved streets, unsafe crossings and a lack of toilets and seating…).