Where the 70Plus Health Programme has come from
The origin was in the office of the Medical Officer of Health in Oxford in 1972. I had just returned from a year of study designed to turn me from a budding young surgeon to a budding young public health doctor. The wise old MOH, Dr John Warin, in response to my keen question "what do you want me to do?" asked in return " what do you think needs to be done?" I answered that I had read many books about population ageing in my post graduate course and we did not even know how many people there were over the age of 65 in the City of Oxford, although we had many doctors looking for diseases in children which had long since disappeared. So he gave me me my head and for the next decade or so i visited 'old people' almost every day and was inspired by their resilience. I was also given responsibility for health education for the City and wondered why we only gave health education to young people. the result was I publishedhe first ever book on Prevention of Disease in The Elderly in 1985. The book is no longer in print in its original form and able to be bought through the wonders of the web from abebooks !
The messages in the book are increasingly recognised and relevant, although I hate the term 'the elderly', in particular the concept of the fitness gap, which was presented to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology's Inquiry to Examine the Scientific Aspects of Ageing by The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in a Memorandum in 2004
The first ten years of my professional life focused on health promotion not just in old ago. working with local and national Age Concern, now called Age_UK. I was also responsible for developing health and housing services for the frailest people in Oxfordshire, and this helped me understand that many of the problems of older people were, and are still due to poverty, not ageing. Hypothermia is a classic example and with some colleagues I published a report in 1977 on the prevention of hypothermia through better housing and less poverty which, depressingly, is almost as relevant today, nearly forty years on.
This led to the development of preventive services for older people, including the promotion of fitness and the need to close the Fitness Gap, first published in the British Medical Journal in 1982 and in a book called Prevention of Disease in the Elderly in 1985 with two great scientists Archie Young and Joan Bassey. I have done many jobs since then but have always kept an interest in old age and now here I am - seventy
Then as the years marched on I joined the club. "How does it feel to be sixty" I was asked on the morning of my sixtieth birthday, not just once but repeatedly and on the fourth or fifth asking I answered, or shouted, “Oh F*** sixty, what does chronological age matter? It just means you have to become more active.”
I then started to write a book called F*** Sixy, wondering how it would be positioned on the book shop shelves, but busyness overtook me and I found myself , aged sixty nine, with another so called ‘milestone’ birthday in prospect which bothered me not at all except that will bring in its turn the inevitable question “How does it feel to be seventy?” The answer “Oh F*** Seventy, every year one just needs to do a little more”
The origin was in the office of the Medical Officer of Health in Oxford in 1972. I had just returned from a year of study designed to turn me from a budding young surgeon to a budding young public health doctor. The wise old MOH, Dr John Warin, in response to my keen question "what do you want me to do?" asked in return " what do you think needs to be done?" I answered that I had read many books about population ageing in my post graduate course and we did not even know how many people there were over the age of 65 in the City of Oxford, although we had many doctors looking for diseases in children which had long since disappeared. So he gave me me my head and for the next decade or so i visited 'old people' almost every day and was inspired by their resilience. I was also given responsibility for health education for the City and wondered why we only gave health education to young people. the result was I publishedhe first ever book on Prevention of Disease in The Elderly in 1985. The book is no longer in print in its original form and able to be bought through the wonders of the web from abebooks !
The messages in the book are increasingly recognised and relevant, although I hate the term 'the elderly', in particular the concept of the fitness gap, which was presented to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology's Inquiry to Examine the Scientific Aspects of Ageing by The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in a Memorandum in 2004
The first ten years of my professional life focused on health promotion not just in old ago. working with local and national Age Concern, now called Age_UK. I was also responsible for developing health and housing services for the frailest people in Oxfordshire, and this helped me understand that many of the problems of older people were, and are still due to poverty, not ageing. Hypothermia is a classic example and with some colleagues I published a report in 1977 on the prevention of hypothermia through better housing and less poverty which, depressingly, is almost as relevant today, nearly forty years on.
This led to the development of preventive services for older people, including the promotion of fitness and the need to close the Fitness Gap, first published in the British Medical Journal in 1982 and in a book called Prevention of Disease in the Elderly in 1985 with two great scientists Archie Young and Joan Bassey. I have done many jobs since then but have always kept an interest in old age and now here I am - seventy
Then as the years marched on I joined the club. "How does it feel to be sixty" I was asked on the morning of my sixtieth birthday, not just once but repeatedly and on the fourth or fifth asking I answered, or shouted, “Oh F*** sixty, what does chronological age matter? It just means you have to become more active.”
I then started to write a book called F*** Sixy, wondering how it would be positioned on the book shop shelves, but busyness overtook me and I found myself , aged sixty nine, with another so called ‘milestone’ birthday in prospect which bothered me not at all except that will bring in its turn the inevitable question “How does it feel to be seventy?” The answer “Oh F*** Seventy, every year one just needs to do a little more”
