Health and wellbeing

Recent publications and reports

Here are a selection of recent and important documents. For related Age UK publications please use the search box below to carry out a more comprehensive search.

 Age UK’s written evidence to the Health Select Committee inquiry into public expenditure (PDF 84KB)

 Health and Social Care Bill second reading (Lords) briefing (PDF 164KB)

 Healthy Ageing - Evidence Review (PDF 2MB)

 Age UK's response to the 2010 NHS white paper (PDF 211KB)

 Waiting for change (PDF 306KB)

Age-friendly health and care services

People in later life make up the largest group of users of health and care services. Despite this, services are rarely delivered in ways that best meet older people’s needs and some providers are known to actively discriminate on the basis of age.

Age UK is working to see health and care services designed and delivered to meet individual needs regardless of age, and to maximise the opportunity to maintain wellbeing and independence in later life.

 Click here to find out how we're supporting the NHS to improve the care of older people with diabetes.

Dignity and quality in healthcare

Dignity in care is a simple expectation that too often goes unmet. Age UK is working to ensure that older people are able to enter any care setting knowing that full regard will be given to our dignity and human rights.

This is an expectation that staff will not talk down to us, will respect our privacy, and will attend to personal and hygiene care needs in a timely and considerate manner. The high quality care that health and care services aspire to cannot be achieved without fully addressing dignity in care.

Current care and support provision is often of poor quality. Individuals within the system struggle to maintain their dignity and too often experience an infringement of their human rights. Money alone will not solve this.

Age UK is arguing for a care and support system that genuinely puts the needs and aspirations of the individual at its heart.

End of life

At the end of life, people often experience care that is poorly coordinated and does not take full account of their physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

Older people can spend the last months and weeks of their life without appropriate care or the chance to decide where they die.

Age UK is pressing care providers to identify the need for end of life care as soon as possible and to reflect older peoples’ needs and preferences and those of their carers and families.

Health, wellbeing and prevention

Healthy living in later life can prevent or delay the onset of serious conditions such as heart disease and to some extent dementia. It can also prevent the further deterioration of health problems and increase people’s general feeling of wellbeing.

In spite of this, health promotion is disproportionately targeted at younger ages. The limiting effects of long-term conditions can be reduced by medical treatment, aids and by removing barriers in the external environment. However, older people do not always access support they could benefit from.

Neglected health conditions

A number of health conditions that predominantly affect older people are frequently given a low profile despite the very real impact they can have in later life.

Critical health concerns include incontinence, sensory loss, arthritis, foot care, dentistry, preventing falls and overcoming depression. All of these can lead to people becoming isolated and experience a severe decline in health and wellbeing.

Age UK wants to see investment on these issues within health and care services and better understanding of their impact on older people.