THE LIVE LONGER BETTER NEIGHBOURHOOD PROGRAMME
The NHS has made fantastic progress in the last fifty years with the development and delivery of technologies such as the artificial hip, renal transplantation and chemotherapy, but it is now clear that the expectations of the NHS are often unrealistic and inappropriate. We need to focus on the key role of the NHS being on the diagnosis of disease, acute treatment and starting the right treatment for long term conditions, and of course it also delivers some valuable preventative services notably immunisation and screening, but for the prevention of disease and for living well with long term problems, the NHS is not the service with these resources to do this. Furthermore because the people turn to the problems of the NHS for wellbeing problems, sometimes related to, but often distinct from, disease the NHS has become overwhelmed. What is needed is the development of resources that focus on enabling people to
- Take action to reduce their risk of disease
- Increase their wellbeing
- Adapt well if disease does develop, preventing the loss of wellbeing that often occurs from accelerated loss of fitness and the feeling of powerlessness that may result after disease develops.
- maintain and improve their wellbeing
- reduce their risk of disease and
- reduce the impact of disease if it does occur.
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD LIVE LONGER BETTER PROGRAMME
Neighbourhoods are not bureaucracies. They are networks including all the resources relating to a particular population, not only public services but also voluntary and community services. Indeed one of the missions of the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme is to encourage and enable communities to develop once more the confidence to create wellbeing services, recognising the talents of the people with assets within the population. Neighbourhoods are perfectly designed to deliver the objectives of the Live Longer Better system
- To prevent and mitigate isolation
- To increase physical ability and resilience and increase healthspan
- promote knowledge and understanding about living longer better among older people and the wider population to counteract the detrimental effects of ageism
- To create an environment in which people can fulfil their potential
- To enable strengthening of purpose
- To support carers better
- To minimise and mitigate the effects of deprivation
- To reduce the risk of, and delay or prevent falls, frailty and dementia
- To prevent and minimise the effects of disease and multimorbidity
The local communities are of course complemented by digital communities, national communities of people facing the same problem such as type 1 diabetes or people all with the same interest for example older people isolated either in their home or psychologically isolated in a residential setting whose lifelong interest has been for a certain type of art or music or for a hobby such as embroidery or their place of birth which no-one in the Home has even heard of. Digitally people can communicate with others facing the same challenge to help one another to adapt to the challenge of long term health problems.
WORKING TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE LIVING LONGER BETTER
The clinical services including pharmacies and local authority services, social care, housing, fitness and library services, need to carry on with their unique roles but also to work closely with providers of community services, both local and digital and of course this will build on advances made with social prescribing and the development of local organisations such as the Active Partnerships of Sport England and AgeUK, whose new Functional Fitness programme is ideally designed for digital prescribing. Key local organisations like Churches and Mosques, U3A, AgeUK and sports clubs also have a key role.
Of certain importance will be the introduction of the W:ISH service for automatic digital prescribing of activity because it will realise the potential benefits of the Live Longer Better Programme both for the neighbourhood and for individuals within. The Centre for Ageing Better’s programme for developing Age Friendly Communities provides a comprehensive framework for neighbourhood action to ensure all eight of the domains highlightedby the Centre are covered
1. Outdoor spaces and buildings
2. Transport
3. Housing
4. Social participation
5. Respect and social inclusion
6. Civic participation and employment
7. Communication and information
8. Community support and health services
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
The Live Longer Better Programme started focusing primarily on people aged sixty and older, but the relevance of the approach to people in their twenties, thirties and forties has become evident. And in the S&W Herts Neighbourhood there are significant developments for people in this age range. It is obvious that the current pattern of clinical services is not meeting the needs of people with stress and people who are depressed or who are “off sick” and the potential of W:ISH technology to provide appropriate opportunities such as Let’s Walk More for these groups is being developed. In addition the Let’s Dance campaign is being engaged to improve the health of nurses in the hospital service. There is also a need to focus on the need of children and young adults. For them activities such as football have a vital part to play to tackle the growth of mental health problems and the challenge of obesity in young people and older people have an important role to play in supporting the activities, and can be encouraged by the fact that volunteering is precisely the type of activity that can give a sense of purpose and reduce the risk of dementia
Live Longer Better is therefore is for all ages.
Muir Gray
Directors; Dr Sarah Price and Sir Muir Gray [email protected]
www.livelongerbetter.uk