"Healthy Working Life Expectancies at Age 50 in Europe, a New Indicator”
announced by ILC-France (France Jul.07)


ILC France has launched an election manifesto in France. It calls on the new president Nicolas Sarkosy and his government, to take action in order to turn Europe's demographic challenge into an opportunity. Françoise Forette, ILC France director and Co-Chair of the Alliance for Health and the Future, has highlighted that "Active and healthy ageing is a unique opportunity for France and Europe to create wealth. Our leaders and the next French President should create the right environment and invest in health to ensure that we do not fail to take up this challenge”.

The ILC/Alliance's election manifesto proposes the promotion of policies and initiatives to improve both healthy and active ageing. Key points from the manifesto are on the website www.ilc-france.org.

Promoting healthy and active ageing by prevention and lifestyle education through the life course is a priority in all ILC France activities and are developed actually through two main projects:

"Entreprises en bonne santé” is an innovative study which is proposed to companies in order to evaluate a prevention program at work. It is based on positive and motivational promotion of lifestyles (nutrition, physical exercise, avoiding low back pain) at the work place as it is a prime location to improve the health literacy of employees.

Healthy Working Life Expectancies at age 50 in Europe: a new indicator. We developed with researchers of INED, INSERM and IRDES a totally new and innovative indicator for Europe: "Healthy Working Life Expectancy”. It is based on the combination of two variables, health and employment statuses with data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). A publication is on going and the first oral presentation will be developed during a symposium chaired by Françoise Forette at the VI European congress of IAGG in St Petersbourg the 6th of July 2007.

Reference:
Lievre A, Jusot F, Barnay T, Sermet C, Brouard N, Robine indicator. JNutr Health Aging 2007;11(6):508-514.
L to R: Marie-Anne Brieu, Jacqueline Gaussens, Francoise Forette (President of ILC-France) and Jean Claude Salord