New FPH Healthy Ageing Special Interest Group Launched!
Recognising the profound demographic changes the UK and other countries are experiencing, and the importance of public health actions to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to age well, the Faculty of Public Health has launched a new Healthy Ageing Special Interest Group (SIG).
Taking a public health lens to healthy ageing means recognising that our experiences of ageing, and our opportunities to make choices that support healthier ageing, are shaped by the same social, economic and structural determinants that shape many other health outcomes.
Ensuring the best possible outcomes for everyone as they grow older means tackling inequalities in ageing, improving the management of later-life conditions like frailty and dementia, and supporting people to age well with pre-existing conditions - as well as supporting health promotion and prevention across the life course and in older age.
Healthy Ageing Special Interest Group Launch Event: Public health is central to the healthy ageing agenda
On the 8th June 2026, over 100 public health professionals and colleagues joined a launch webinar for the new SIG, with a keynote presentation from England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, and a lively panel session featuring five expert speakers on ageing and public health.
The event set out to answer the question “What is the role of the Public Health profession in the healthy ageing agenda?” and kicked off a series of workshops to shape the SIG’s work for the next year. One month on, we’re reflecting on the themes that emerged and our plans for what comes next.
Professor Whitty opened the launch event with a stark reminder: that people who live the longest do not have the longest period in ill health. Instead, those who live in the greatest deprivation experience a double injustice - they spend more years of their shorter lives in ill health.
Nor are these the only inequalities in ageing: for example, rural and coastal areas are expected to experience the fastest rate of population ageing, alongside a smaller working age population. This imbalance presents significant challenges for the workforce and other resources. Professor Whitty highlighted the discrepancy between where stroke thrombolysis services have been developed (mostly urban areas) and where population ageing is happening most rapidly and stroke prevalence is greatest (mostly rural areas).
And while these inequalities alone justify a public health lens, Professor Whitty was also clear that many of the solutions to the challenges of healthy ageing are rooted in public health. A whistlestop tour through tobacco, alcohol, obesity and the built environment showed the vital role of primary prevention in reducing inequalities associated with frailty, dementia and multimorbidity. Professor Whitty also highlighted opportunities to support healthy ageing through healthcare and secondary prevention with a special focus on the growing evidence linking infections with serious long-term conditions such as stroke, ischaemic heart disease and dementia.
Although the challenge is significant, there is cause for optimism. Historical successes in reducing cardiovascular disease mortality, and compression of morbidity within some groups, offer evidence that we can bring about change. Professor Whitty concluded that we must: “delay, delay, delay, and so prevent.” Through coordinated action across primary, secondary and tertiary prevention we can push the onset of conditions such as dementia beyond the age at which someone would otherwise die, effectively preventing them.
Following the CMO’s keynote, our panel discussion brought in perspectives from across public health, government and academia:
Professor Sir Muir Gray, founder of Live Longer Better, an NHS-affiliated partnership to drive healthy ageing action, emphasised the importance of community centred approaches drawing upon local assets, social participation and volunteering. He proposed novel approaches including single, integrated budgets for services for older people to support value-based care and highlighted the need for further work to improve local data quality and outcome metrics.
Professor Peter Kelly, Regional Director of Public Health for the North East and Yorkshire and lead for healthy ageing at the Department of Health and Social Care, reflected on the strong public health focus in the forthcoming WHO Europe ‘Ageing is Living’ strategy and described the four pillars it will cover: prevention across the life course, transforming health and care systems, age-friendly environments, and tackling ageism.
Professor Zafar Iqbal, Vice President of the FPH and Chair of the NHS Public Health Provider Network, welcomed the SIG's launch as part of a broader shift in focus from simply extending life expectancy to improving quality of life and delaying frailty. He echoed Sir Muir’s challenge on optimising resource allocation and felt that the neighbourhood health agenda could be a key lever for public health action.
Professor Elizabeth Orton, Consultant in Public Health at Leicestershire County Council and Professor of Public Health at the University of Nottingham, urged the group to keep the framing asset-based rather than disease-focused, asking what people can do, not ‘what is wrong with them’. She highlighted a need to design research with commissioning in mind from the outset, to enable effective translation of research findings into practice. She also highlighted how the overrepresentation of higher socioeconomic groups in research risks reinforcing the very inequalities the SIG hopes to address.
Finally, Dr Shona Arora, Interim Chief Medical Advisor at UKHSA, connected the agenda to UKHSA's work on vaccination uptake in older adults, antimicrobial resistance, climate-resilient housing, and lessons from the forthcoming COVID inquiry about protecting older people during crises.
Questions from the floor covered evidence gaps (from chronic dental infection to the socioeconomic gradient in frailty), intergenerational work, and how to engage system partners such as social care services which are stretched by immediate pressures. Throughout the keynote, panel discussion, and Q&A there was a recurring message: public health should be central to the collective challenge of healthy ageing - striking a balanced approach across primary, secondary and tertiary prevention while addressing inequities in ageing.
From launch to action: what our members told us
Two follow-up workshops brought together SIG members to reflect on themes from the launch and to shape priorities and ways of working. Some clear themes emerged:
Community of practice enables advocacy. Across both workshops, there was a strong appetite for the SIG to act as a networking and coordination hub - helping members find each other, share what's working, and avoid duplicating existing regional and local networks. As one participant put it: “get the public health house in order before turning outward.” That said, members were clear that convening a national network of public health professionals working on healthy ageing is, in itself, an advocacy act and one which underpins the SIG’s expertise and authority within this space. Two forms of advocacy were identified as vital: championing healthy ageing within the public health profession, and championing public health approaches within the healthy ageing agenda.
A practical scope that responds to system needs. Members were reluctant to define a narrow set of priority topics too early, preferring to keep the group's remit broad for now (in the context of an already-agreed ambition for the SIG to be inclusive of lifecourse prevention through to supporting people to live well in older age; encompassing all areas of public health practice). Where specific interest areas did surface, they included frailty, dementia and brain health, sensory loss (hearing and vision), alcohol, physical activity, inclusion health, and the links to adult social care and neighbourhood health.
Light-touch, useful communication. Rather than meetings for their own sake, members expressed a preference for regular newsletter-type correspondence that gives space to existing communities of practice to share updates, a small number of well-produced webinars each year to share learning at the national level, and a way to flag important calls for evidence and policy developments as they arise.
Every member brings something to the table. Members already bring substantial expertise and networks: age-friendly communities work, falls prevention, post-diagnostic dementia support, older adults' mental health and suicide prevention, action on elder abuse, sexual health in later life, and links into existing groups such as the Adult Social Care, Transport and Musculoskeletal Health SIGs. Part of the SIG's job will be making those connections visible to embed healthy ageing across the FPH’s work.
What’s next
The SIG Executive are now turning workshop feedback into a working plan for the next year. Alongside quarterly member updates, we have begun planning a trio of webinars timed to respond to key dates already on the horizon (exact dates and times will be shared by email with the SIG membership and via the FPH website, once confirmed). These include:
- Early October 2026 - to celebrate International Day of Older Persons, and respond to the WHO Europe Ageing is Living strategy due this autumn. Keynote speaker: Professor Peter Kelly, Regional Director of Public Health for the North East and Yorkshire and UK lead for the WHO strategy.
- Late January 2027 - to digest the Dementia and Frailty Modern Service Framework and Neighbourhood Health.
- Spring 2027 - a focus on inclusive ageing and ensuring that our public health response to the ageing population recognises the increasing diversity of our older population.
To help ensure we’re on the right track, we will also undertake a members’ survey later in 2026. Finally, we hope that over the coming months we can identify areas for advocacy for those members who want to contribute to the national discussion.
If population ageing is one of the defining challenges facing health and care systems, public health has a distinctive and necessary role to play, not just in adding years to life, but in adding health to those years. The Healthy Ageing SIG exists to make sure that role is organised, connected, and heard.
Interested in getting involved? Join the Healthy Ageing SIG through MyFPH.
