communities , delivering against ambitions outlined in the government ’ s Levelling Up White Paper .
As far back as 2010 , Sir Michael Marmot ’ s landmark report showed the nation ’ s health was deteriorating and gains in life expectancy were beginning to stall . Since then , Sir Michael ’ s work has continued to show health inequalities are rising , the time people spend in poor health is increasing , and the gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of the UK is now almost 20 years . The impact of COVID-19 on the nation ’ s health was vast , but the impact was even more apparent in areas of the country already suffering with poor health , further driving increases in the healthy life expectancy gap .
This means that understandably , worsening population health is also clear to see in recent economic measures . The number of working-age adults who are out of work because of long-term sickness has been rising since 2019 , from around 2m people in spring 2019 , to about 2.8m in summer 2023 . Similarly , total employment in the UK fell following the pandemic and still has not recovered to pre-pandemic level .
56 Transforming Lives Through Innovation
Evidence shows that the reason for increasing unemployment is people not able to work or not actively looking for work , rather than people who are unemployed searching for work and unable to find employment . This clearly points to the worsening health of the population : people are increasingly becoming economically inactive due to poor health . Data also shows that the UK has a higher level of preventable ill-health ( e . g . smoking and other lifestyle factors ) than its European counterparts ,
The national , northern and regional picture reinforces the need for a new approach to improve health and economic wellbeing much of which is driven by socioeconomic factors . This poses two questions . How can we help those who have fallen into ill health and become economically inactive following the pandemic to improve their health to support themselves as individuals ? Secondly , how can we prevent people in areas with greater socioeconomic challenges from falling into preventable ill-health and instead , stay in good employment which supports their physical and mental health ?