These are the next major health conditions we’ll be worrying about

Heart disease, stroke and road injuries will no longer pose the greatest threats to our health in the future – is the NHS ready to face these new challenges? Asks Ian Hamilton

‘More men and women will experience a reduced quality of life as a result of their consumption of alcohol and other drugs’ (PA)

As a population our health needs change over time – what threatened us a century ago doesn’t pose the same threat today. Understanding our collective health needs post-pandemic is critical to planning a health care system that is able to respond to these new threats to our health.

A fascinating new study makes some scientific predictions about what those major threats to our health beyond Covid-19 will be. Instead of ischemic heart disease, stroke and road injuries, the most common problems will be alcohol-related cirrhosis, drug use disorders and diabetes. This means more men and women will experience a reduced quality of life as a result of their consumption of alcohol and other drugs. So, while overall life expectancy has increased, a greater proportion of the population will experience poor health as they age. They may not die prematurely but their quality of life will be severely impaired.

Understanding this major shift in the burden of disease has clear implications for the NHS and social care. The current configuration of services, and the way they are delivered, is based on health problems that will diminish. Some of the problems that will instead dominate in the future have been fuelled by the pandemic. For example, those who were already drinking excessively prior to the pandemic further increased their consumption during the Covid crisis. We are not in a good place with specialist support services as they are severely underfunded. Services struggle to meet the current rise in demand, let alone the surge in coming years, suggested by this research.