The UK’s Health and Social Care Committee is actively looking at how physical activity can be used to improve the health and wellbeing of the older populations.

An inquiry was launched earlier this year calling for evidence of how physical activity can minimise and delay ill health as people age and how it can be used throughout older age to reduce the impacts of ill health and prevent the development of multi-morbidity and frailty.

The Committee will also be exploring how physical activity levels could have an impact on reducing the gap between older people in the most and least deprived regions.

Other areas of interest are how health services can work with social care, local government, the third sector and businesses to support older people to be more physically active, and the potential of broadening access to social prescribing.

The Chief Medical Officer has called for there to be a focus on maximising independence and minimising the time spent in ill health between reaching older age and the end of life. Progress on improving healthy life expectancy in England has stalled and people are spending longer living with ill health in their older years. While physical activity has been highlighted as playing an important role in preventing ill health, activity levels in England are lowest among older people.

The submission deadline was 7 August and the department has told HCM that 140 submissions were received which will be made public in the next couple of weeks.