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Health and wealth divides in UK worsening despite ‘levelling up’ drive, report finds
People in the UK are getting “sicker and poorer”, with a widening health and wealth divide between regions that undermines the levelling up agenda, research from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has found. Economic inactivity because of sickness is at its highest level since records began, with 2.5 million working-age adults inactive due to their health, states the IPPR report due out later this week.
The report shows that a significantly higher than average proportion of working-age people are economically inactive because of poor health in the north-east, north-west, Yorkshire, east Midlands, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A total of 10.8% of the Northern Irish population are too ill to work, compared with 4.4% in the south-east, while the UK average is 6.1%.
Productivity levels in these places are far below the levels in London, where each person adds an average of £52,239 to the economy a year. This compares with £20,364 in the north-east, where productivity is lowest, and an average of £29,063 across the UK. This gap of more than £30,000 between London and the north-east has risen by £8,000 since 2012.
The north-east also has the lowest healthy life expectancy, at 59 years, compared with 66 years in the south-east, which has the highest healthy life expectancy. Healthy life expectancy is the measure of the number of years that people report they are living in good health.
Chris Thomas, the head of the commission on health and prosperity at the IPPR and the author of the report, said: “Deepening health inequalities [are] undermining national prosperity, particularly in the north and the devolved nations. If the government truly wants to level up the country, it needs to do far more to make better health a keystone of the UK’s economic recovery. Better health is the best and clearest route to better lives, fairer economics, and greater prosperity for us all.”
Clare Bambra, a professor of public health at Newcastle University and another member of the IPPR commission, said: “The north has huge economic potential. But time and time again, research has shown that government’s failure to tackle health inequalities are setting it back. If ministers want to level up the country, deliver better lives for all people, and ensure a productive economy, then they must tackle health inequalities in the north of England and beyond.”
Source: The Guardian, 4 December 2022
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Doctors report “cry of pain” at witnessing worsening health under government cuts
Doctors across the UK have told the BMA of the distress they are experiencing at witnessing people’s health suffer as a result of years of “government neglect and funding cuts.” They said that they are picking up the pieces of a broken social safety net, decimated public services, in-work poverty, and weakened public health.
“The toll such demand takes on doctors and other healthcare staff could be mitigated if the UK government took steps to protect the nation’s health,” said the BMA in a report launched last week. It called for urgent government action to protect people’s economic security, to properly fund public services, and to tackle health inequalities.
The report highlighted the cost of living crisis, cuts to public services announced in the chancellor’s autumn statement in November 2022, and the weakening of policies to tackle the root causes of ill health such as alcohol use, obesity, and smoking.
BMA president Martin McKee said doctors’ experiences amounted to a “cry of pain” and sense of helplessness for patients whose lives were worsening as budgets for health, welfare, local government, and housing were eroding.
Source: BMJ, 2 December 2022
See also: British Medical Association report - The country is getting sicker
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Australia: Labor launches new smoking measures amid new prevalence data
One in 10 adults, or 1.9 million people, regularly smoked one or more cigarettes, cigars, or pipes per day, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The data comes after Federal Health Minister Mark Butler announced sweeping new anti-smoking laws that will see menthol and other flavoured cigarettes banned and individual cigarettes will have their own health warning as part of the government's efforts to reduce the appeal. Butler also flagged that cigarette products will be standardised to remove marketing advantages used by tobacco companies, on top of the introduction of plain packaging just over a decade ago.
Overall, the proportion of adults who were daily smokers has fallen over the last decade, down from 16.1% in 2011-12 to just over 10% in 2021-21. The proportion of people aged 18-44 years who said they were current daily smokers has almost halved in the same time period. Nationally, the average age of those who identify as current daily smokers has increased. In 2021-21, the average age was 46, up from 42 years a decade ago. The number of daily smokers has decreased across all age groups, except for those aged 55-64 and 65 years and over. During the same period, the proportion of young people aged 18-24 years who were current daily smokers has halved (16.5% in 2011-12 to 7.1% in 2021-22). A majority (96.8%) of young people aged 15 to 17 years were current nonsmokers in 2021-22, up from 94.2% a decade ago.
Men were found to be more likely than women to be current daily smokers, 12% to 8.2%. Almost one in five (18.6%) people who were unemployed were current daily smokers. People who lived in areas of disadvantage were more than three times as likely to be current smokers than in areas of least disadvantage. But overall, the proportion of people in these areas who were current daily smokers has fallen from 23.4% to 16.1% in 2021-22.
The ABS insights comes from the combined findings from the Smoker Status data and information from the National Health Survey, Survey of Income and Housing, National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, and the Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers.
Source: Daily Mail, 5 December 2022
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US opinion: We must make healthier food
Writing in the Guardian, Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything, argues that the US government strategy of telling people to “eat better” will not succeed while unhealthy food is so accessible.
Diet-related diseases (diabetes, heart disease, a dozen cancers) kill around 600,000 Americans per year he notes and that increasingly, studies show that it isn’t simply “sugar” or “inflammation” or “saturated fat” that causes these diseases, but rather a still-to-be-determined combination of factors inherent in UPFs. With 60% of the calories in the food supply in the form of ultra-processed foods (UPFs, or junk food), he explains that action is in the domain of agricultural policy and so for a healthy population, we must mandate or at least incentivise growing real food for nutrition.
He suggests better labelling laws, taxes on the most egregious offenders (especially sugar-sweetened beverages) and limits on selling junk food on government property and to young people. He also suggests emphasising subsidies to producers to encourage the growing and sale of real whole foods, and by making sure that those food programs receiving federal dollars promote truly plant-forward eating.
Bittman concludes stressing the sooner the rules around production and consumption are implemented, the sooner the US can address critical food-related issues for the public’s health.
Source: The Guardian, 4 December 2022
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