Our mission is to help people live longer better
Our mission is to enable people to live better for longer, to increase Healthy Life Expectancy and reduce the period of time at the end of life when people are very dependent on others. Our aim is also  to reduce the gap between the most and least deprived sub-groups in our society.  It is based on a clear understanding of the science and a strong evidence base.
​The number of people over 70 is going to increase significantly in the next ten years with, at present,  little increase in healthy life expectancy in prospect. This has huge implications for health and social care services.  It doesn’t have to be this way. The evidence is strong that we can reduce the risk of falls and prevent dementia, disability and frailty.  In turn, this will reduce the need for health and social care by approximately £45m per million of population for every year of healthy life expectancy. More of the same won’t achieve this and nor will yet another reorganisation of health and social care services. It needs revolution is underway and one dimension is for every service and organisation to feel part of one integrated system for living longer better, with the following objectives:
  • Prevent and mitigate isolation
  • Increase physical ability, resilience and healthspan, and to prevent falls and frailty
  • Promote knowledge and understanding about living longer better among older people and the wider population to counteract the detrimental effects of ageism
  • Create an environment in which people can fulfil their potential
  • Activate people and enable strengthening of purpose 
  • Support carers better 
  • Minimise and mitigate the effects of deprivation 
  • Reduce the risk of, and delay or prevent  dementia
  • Prevent and minimise the effects of disease and multimorbidity
  • Enable dying well as well as living well
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These objectives are being delivered by local networks involving AgeUK, the Active Partnerships, the NHS, Local Authorities and the business community and, essentially, older people themselves.  ​These networks are also leading a cultural revolution to counter ageism and create a positive environment which recognises the talents and potential of older people and appreciates what is needed to reduce the obstacles that too often prevent people realising their potential to contribute to society.

​Living Longer Better complements and supplements the Ageing Well programme of NHS England. The Ageing Well programme takes a systematic approach to identifying all the people with frailty, or at high risk of developing, frailty and ensuring the NHS clinical teams, particularly in primary care, take effective, evidence-based action to prevent deterioration and unnecessary hospital admission, because of the adverse effect that has on people with frailty no matter how high the quality of care in the hospital.
However the distinguished epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose pointed out that it was also necessary to reduce. the risk of people at lower relative risk because there are so many more of them. He supported the need to identify the people at high risk , the top 10% of the population for example, but because the absolute numbers of people at lower risk are much higher, 90% of the population, the absolute number of people needing emergency care from the lower risk part of the population could be as high or even higher than the numbers of people from the group at higher relative risk. He emphasised that we need to "Shift the Whole Population Curve". 
Furthermore we need to adopt this approach earlier in life.the increase in the numbers of younger people who are off work long term is a major concern and they too suffer physical deconditioning and psychological problems which are too often treated only with pyschotropic drugs. They too need to be enabled to Live Longer Better.
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Mission and goals

Programmes of learning and engagement
The Live Longer Better programme has three aims.
The first is to increase activity (physical, cognitive and emotional) which will:
  • Help people feel and function better, this year
  • Prevent or delay the onset of dementia, falls, disability and frailty
  • Focus on the three Rs: regain confidence and purpose, recover the strength, skill, stamina and suppleness they have lost in the last decade, and recondition the body that disease and inappropriate inactivity has deconditioned
The second is to increase healthy life expectancy and compress the period of dependency while at the same time reducing the gap between the most and the least deprived groups in society. 
​The third is to reduce the need for health and social care because a person with greater strength, stamina, skill and suppleness has greater resilience is less likely to need acute care and more likelyto be able to return home quickly.

About us

We are four teams working in partnership
The Optimal Ageing Programme ,
The e-learning specialists Learning with Experts 
Polyatrics
The National Activity Therapy Service
The main intervention to achieve the goal of the revolution is not technological, although it is enabled by technology, but by two interlinked programmes
Firstly the goal will be achieved through learning that opens up new ways of thinking for older people, the family, professionals and volunteers who support them, and the leadership of key decision makers.  Our learning programme is based on the best current knowledge and delivered through online learning in small interactive groups.
Secondly the objectives will be achieved by engaging people both locally and digitally in both individual and community action and we believe that everyone has a contribution to make to improve society.

Library and resources

There is strong scientific evidence that if we put into practice the knowledge that we already have, people can live longer better.  Most of the serious problems that people face before their late nineties are not due to the normal, biological ageing process but to three other process that can be modified by individuals and society –
  • loss of fitness,
  • disease, complicated by accelerated lss of fitness and
  • social factors, deprivation affecting too many people and negative, ageist thinking. affecting everyone
Our library organises the evidence behind this and contains the knowledge that is needed to reduce the risk or disability, frailty, dementia and dependence on other people.
Knowledge, consumed through learning, is the Elixir of Life - the way we think about ageing is wrong; the new evidence from research lets us reimagine living longer  and then realise the new paradigm and live longer better — Muir Gray
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