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** 28 September 2022
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** UK
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** Labour pledge training places for thousands more nurses and health visitors (#1)
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** Asthma attacks in more than 1m people linked to UK cost of living rationing (#2)
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** What would ditching anti-obesity measures mean for pharmacy weight-loss services? (#3)
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** 'Furious' mother calls for action after finding teenage daughter's vapes (#4)
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** International
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** US launches effort to end hunger by 2030 by expanding benefits and access to healthy foods (#5)
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** Feeling depressed or lonely can age us faster than smoking, researchers say (#6)
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** UK
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** Labour pledge training places for thousands more nurses and health visitors
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The Labour Party has pledged to create an additional 10,000 nursing and midwifery clinical placements and double the number of district nurses qualifying in England every year. In addition, the party has promised to train 5,000 more health visitors over a five-year period and to produce a long-term workforce plan for the NHS for the next five, 10 and 15 years. The announcements came during the party’s annual conference.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said she recognised that the NHS was “on its knees” and outlined plans to address workforce shortages. Ms Reeves said the party would reinstate the 45% additional rate of income tax, which was scrapped by the government on Friday, in order to fund its plans for the workforce if Labour came into power.

The party’s new policy briefing outlined its commitment to a long-term workforce plan for the NHS for the next five, 10 and 15 years. Included was its pledge to create a new independent body responsible for “undertaking workforce projections and producing a plan that will be published and laid before parliament”. Such a body would also be in charge of “creating new types of health and care professionals that draw on a diverse skills mix”, and for “creating new paths into the NHS and social care and reviewing existing training pathways to ensure they’re fit for purpose”.

While the briefing attracted wide support, Royal College of Nursing general secretary and chief executive, Pat Cullen cautioned that the problem was far bigger than what the briefing was able to address: “With 47,000 unfilled nurse posts in England’s NHS alone and 25,000 staff leaving the profession in the last year alone, urgent investment is needed in measures to recruit and retain – including fair pay and funding tuition fees.”

Source: Nursing Times, 27 September 2022
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** Asthma attacks in more than 1m people linked to UK cost of living rationing

One in five of the 5.4 million people living with asthma in the UKhave had an asthma attack because of changes they have been forced to make due to rising energy, food and household bills, according to the research by Asthma + Lung UK. Fuel poverty campaigners described the figures as “distressing”.

The survey found 90% of people with lung conditions had already made significant changes to cope with the rising cost of living, such as 63% eating less and buying less food, 15% cutting back on their inhaler to make it last longer, 5% borrowing medicines from someone else and 6% not collecting their prescriptions. Almost half of the 3,600 people with lung conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchiectasis surveyed by the charity said their health had worsened since the crisis began.

Asthma + Lung UK warned there could be a “tidal wave” of hospital admissions in the next few months as cold weather, an abundance of viruses and people cutting back on medicines, heating, food and electricity put them at increased risk.

Sarah Woolnough, the charity’s chief executive, said: “Untenable cost of living hikes are forcing people with lung conditions to make impossible choices about their health [...] Warm homes, regular medicine and a healthy diet are all important pillars to good lung condition management – but they all come at a cost. We are hearing from people already reporting a sharp decline in their lung health, including many having life-threatening asthma attacks. With temperatures beginning to fall and further energy price hikes looming, we’re seriously worried that when winter bites it will tip the country into a public health crisis.”

The charity is calling for tailored financial support to help meet the increasing price of food and prescriptions, costing some people with asthma more than £400 a year.

Source: Guardian, 28 September 2022
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** What would ditching anti-obesity measures mean for pharmacy weight-loss services?
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Pharmacies in England have seen their weight-loss service demand boom in recent months, amid concerns that the government is planning on scrapping its entire anti-obesity strategy, including restricting the promotion of junk food in light of the soaring cost of living. Critics have warned that the move “is completely unsustainable” and may trigger further increased demand for pharmacies’ already popular weight loss services.

Manor Pharmacy Group pharmacist and managing director Graham Phillips warned that dropping anti-obesity measures may also see pharmacies face rising demand for other services, as far more patients are already presenting with symptoms of dementia, cancer, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

He told C+D: “The potential for healthy living pharmacies (HLPs) has just been forgotten [...] I would like every HLP to have a commissioned [weight loss] service.”

Last week, a coalition of 70 health organisations, including the British Medical Association, Diabetes UK and British Heart Foundation, wrote to prime minister Liz Truss to express their “profound concern” over plans to abandon the strategy.

Source: Chemist and Druggist, 26 September 2022
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** 'Furious' mother calls for action after finding teenage daughter's vapes

A mother from Batheaston, Somerset has reported that her 17 year old daughter was able to buy several vapes from a city centre store. Her experience is just one of several being shared on the community website, Next Door.

The mum-of-one reported her discovery to Bathavon North councillor Sarah Warren who contacted the Trading Standards team. Tim Ball, the council's cabinet member for planning and licensing, said: "We were contacted with an allegation and we’ve worked with the trader giving comprehensive guidance to avoid any risk of underage sales of Nicotine Inhaling Products."

Bath Live also approached the shop for comment. The store's owner confirmed that the council had approached him on the matter. They said: "We have improved the training of our staff as we absolutely do not want to provide vaping products to anyone under the age of 18. We have a very strict policy on that. The training from the council was very, very helpful. We are doing everything we can to make sure that not a single person who looks younger than 25 can buy a vaping product without showing their ID to confirm they are over 18 years of age."

Despite it being illegal to sell e-cigarettes to under-18s, figure suggest there has been an increase in youth use of e-cigarettes, with shops found to be the main source of supply.

Source: Somerset Live, 26 September 2022
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** International
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** US launches effort to end hunger by 2030 by expanding benefits and access to healthy foods

The Biden government has launched a new food strategy to end hunger in the US by 2030 through the expansion of benefits such as free school meals and food stamps, with better access to healthy food options. The plan, published on Tuesday, wants to cut the number of households experiencing hunger from 4% to less than 1% by 2030, and half the number experiencing food insecurity.

The food strategy also aims to cut diet-related diseases by increasing access to healthy food and exercise as new data shows that more than 35% of people in 19 states and two territories are obese – more than double the number of states in 2018 – while one in 10 Americans have diabetes. Reliance on food banks has increased over the same period.

The plan includes proposals to reform food packaging and voluntary salt and sugar reduction targets for the food industry, as well as working to expand Medicaid and Medicare access to obesity counselling and nutrition. Healthy food and meal prescriptions could be piloted for Medicare recipients with diabetes and other preventable diet related conditions.

The plan states that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will support communities to convert vacant spaces into grocery stores, urban gardens and food hubs. About 40 million people live far from the nearest grocery store, with rural and Indigenous communities most likely to live in the worst food deserts.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will conduct research and propose developing an easy-to-understand food packaging label to help consumers make healthier choices – something which the food industry has spent huge amounts of money to delay and derail in countries across the world.

According to Andy Fisher, researcher and author of Big Hunger, the document contains lots of great ideas but “the strategies are too small for such enormous problems” and that the industry has been “spared”. There are proposals to increase safety nets, he says, but few concrete measures, as the plans depend on securing support from a polarised Congress which has so far refused to extend the child tax credit and universal free school meals – both of which led to historic improvements in food security in the wake of the pandemic.

Source: Guardian, 27 September 2022
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** Feeling depressed or lonely can age us faster than smoking, researchers say
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Feeling unhappy, depressed or lonely could speed up the ageing processes more than smoking or even certain diseases, researchers have suggested.

Writing in the journal Ageing-US, researchers at Deep Longevity, Stanford University, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong used blood-based and biometric data to compute a “biological ageing clock” based on the ageing of the body’s functions, influenced by genetics, lifestyle and other factors. The team then compared the age of individuals predicted by their “ageing-clock” model with their actual age.

While the researchers suggested the average effect of ageing-associated diseases (e.g. stroke, liver disease and lung conditions) did not add more than 18 months to the predicted age, they argued that psychological factors, such as feeling unhappy or being lonely, add up to 1.65 years to one’s biological age.

Their study also found that people who smoke are predicted to be 15 months older than their non-smoking peers. Questioning this, Andrew Steptoe, professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London, said it is unlikely isolation and loneliness are truly worse risk factors for health than smoking, noting that the study only looked at data collected at one point in time.

He said: “The researchers did not follow up participants to show that those with psychological distress actually aged more rapidly. It will be important in the future to test whether these predictions are fulfilled by repeating testing over a number of years.”

Source: Guardian, 27 September 2022

See also: Study - Psychological factors substantially contribute to biological ageing: evidence from the ageing rate in Chinese older adults ([link removed])
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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