Lifepath final meeting in Geneve, March 26-27Lifepath is coming to an end and their members are ready to present the main outcomes of the project. The final meeting will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 26th and 27th, at the Foundation Louis-Jeantet, with the aim of summarizing policy-relevant science from Lifepath and identifying policy options to support a healthy life course.
Lifepath is a research consortium funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, which aims to understand the impact of socio-economic differences on healthy ageing with an approach that considers the relative importance of effects on life, comparing studies on childhood and adult risks. After 4 years of work and more than 50 articles published in major scientific journals, we can summarize the results of the project in 7 key messages.
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The relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and health inequalities lies at the core of Lifepath research. A growing amount of evidence highlights the role of chronic inflammation in this connection, as confirmed by two recent studies.
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European countries have been more successful than US in avoiding an aggravation of health inequalities due to the 2008 financial crisis. This is the conclusion of a study published on PNAS by Lifepath, a project funded by the European Commission, which investigates the biological pathways underlying social differences in healthy ageing.
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Low socioeconomic position is linked to a deterioration in the quality of ageing equivalent to a loss of 4-7 years of good physical health by age 60. This is the conclusion of a study published in the BMJ by Lifepath, a project funded by the European Commission, which investigates the biological pathways underlying social differences in healthy ageing.
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Lifepath announced the publication of its new study on the health impacts of Opportunity NYC–Family Rewards, a conditional cash transfer programme in New York City aimed at improving population health by making cash transfers conditional on engaging in a number of activities, including school attendance, preventive health care use and employment participation for parents. Family Rewards was the first conditional cash transfer program for low-income families in the US.
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Social and economic adversity, especially in early life, may accelerate the biological aging process, but such an effect is reversible. The biological age of individuals living in poor socioeconomic circumstances is, on average, one year higher than that of people raised in better social environments. This is what emerges from the study conducted by an international team of researchers of Lifepath, a project funded by the European Commission to investigate the biological pathways underlying social differences in healthy ageing.
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Many social scientists believe that a variety of social environmental factors have an effect on the epigenome, which is the set of chemical changes to the DNA and its related proteins. However, so far there has been little evidence to date in humans about that. According to a group of researchers, social environmental conditions have a smaller epigenetic effect compared to factors with a more direct biological impact – such as smoking, alcohol consumption or body mass index.
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More generous spending on health care helps reduce absolute inequalities in mortality, at least in the European context. This is what emerged from a study conducted by Lifepath researchers, who examined trends in inequalities in mortality in seventeen European countries, over the course of twenty years.
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Lifepath aims to understand how to reduce health inequities through a life course approach. Early life exposures to particular socio-economic conditions may indeed have a relevant long-term impact in late life. This implies a representation of health more as a trajectory than as a static status. Such a dynamic conceptualization comes from the life-trajectory model proposed by David Blane, which describes life and ageing as continuous processes, made up by two main stages: the “build-up” phase, which begins at conception and ends in late adolescence, followed by a “decline” phase. Exposure to low socioeconomic conditions during the first stage of the curve can have a negative impact on the maximum level of health that can be attained. During the decline stage, individual capacity, function and wellbeing will start to decrease, with the socioeconomic status (SES) being a relevant influence on the rate of this reduction.
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