Policy Lab provides an experimental environment for testing and evaluating new ways to make policy. In our ten-year history we have created space for designers, technologists, ethnographers and other novel practitioners, all with the aim to make policy more effective, …
England is at a cross roads. Big advances in average life expectancy mean that people are living longer. This is an extraordinary story of success but also brings many challenges – 1 in 3 people over 65 will develop dementia. 800,000 in the UK already have Dementia and this number will double in the next 30 years. Dementia is already estimated to cost £19bn a year, a huge cost to the economy.
Smoking rates in England have fallen very little since 2007. Cancer Research UK reports that smoking kills more people than road accidents, overdoses, murder, suicides and HIV combined – by a factor of five. Smoking is also a major contributor to health inequalities – accounting for around half of the excess risk of premature deaths between the highest and lowest socio-economic groups.