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Tackling the challenges of an ageing population

Meeting the challenges of improving care for a growing and increasingly older population is being debated by a Westminster Health Forum keynote seminar today.

Professor John Young, NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Frail Elderly and Integration, will tell the Forum about the NHS Five Year Forward View and its policy priorities for older people.

He is expected to say: “If we are to redesign services to embrace people with frailty, we first need to change our perception of frailty from its traditional characterisation of an enfeebled, emaciated person as portrayed by Shakespeare.”

Professor Young will address the problems of dealing with an ageing population where “one half of later life will be spent with some degree of dependency – disappointing for the individual and potentially expensive for our health and social care system.”