Date: Wednesday, 24 March 2021
Time: 2.00pm – 3.30pm GMT

In March 2021, we held a virtual policy event highlighting our project “Making the extra years count: Inequalities in disability and dependency with increasing longevity” – led by Newcastle University and funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust.

Longevity has been increasing for several decades, but a key concern is whether these extra years are spent healthy and independent or if they feature disability and dependency.

The UK Government has set a target to increase healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035, and success on meeting this target requires not only knowing how this has been changing over time but also where differences in the population exist. This project set out to improve our understanding of these circumstances and help inform policy to support healthier later lives.

This event showcased new evidence around life expectancy from the team led by Prof Carol Jagger, including:

• How disability-free and dependency-free life expectancy have changed since 1991, with a particular focus on the differences between men and women;
• How the risk of developing disability or dependency has changed over time;
• The role of deprivation and specific conditions in shaping inequalities in disability-free and dependency-free life expectancy.

The event was chaired by Dr Brian Beach, Senior Research Fellow at ILC. Speakers included:

• Prof Sir Michael Marmot, Director of the UCL Institute for Health Equity
• Baroness Young of Old Scone
• Prof Sir Muir Gray, Director of the Optimal Ageing Programme
• Dr Alison Giles, Joint Associate Director for Healthy Ageing at Public Health England
• Prof Carol Jagger, Professor of the Epidemiology of Ageing at Newcastle University
• Prof Les Mayhew, Head of Global Research, ILC-UK