Fuel or food? Health and policy implications for older people in the UK

Join us for the last in our 2022-2023 Centre for Ageing and Biographical Studies Seminar Series

In a time of economic turmoil, the UK is facing a stark cost-of-living crisis where people may be forced to choose between heating their homes and eating regular, nutritious meals. Limited research has explored this intersection of food and fuel poverty (FFP). Older adults are particularly vulnerable to a potential “heat or eat” trade-off and to the health repercussions of FFP. Excess mortality is the starkest of FFP’s potential health repercussions, which impacts the UK more than other neighbouring colder climate countries.

In this session, Dr Aravinda Guntupalli (Senior Lecturer in Global Health, University of Aberdeen) and Sarah Champagne (PhD Researcher, University of Aberdeen) will jointly explore these largely neglected phenomena that are markedly salient for older adults, drawing on their current research.

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Agenda

• Introduction and setting the scene [Dr Aravinda Meera Guntupalli]

• Heating or eating? The framing of food and fuel poverty in UK news media [Sarah N Champagne]

• Emerging evidence on food and fuel poverty policy in Scotland: where do older adults fit in? [Sarah N Champagne]

• Excess mortality’s perfect storm: climate change, austerity and old age in England and Wales [Dr Aravinda Meera Guntupalli]

The speakers:

Aravinda Meera Guntupalli is a Senior Lecturer in Global Health at the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on health inequalities across the life course among people with protected characteristics, focusing on NCD-related inequalities among middle-aged and older adults and multidimensional poverty among older people. She also works on nutrition and health inequalities among migrants in low and middle-income countries.

Sarah Champagne is a qualitative researcher and PhD student at the University of Aberdeen exploring the impacts of multidimensional poverty on the health of older adults. She specialises in health policy and intersectional health inequities. Prior to starting at the University of Aberdeen, Sarah worked as a global health research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Please note: this event is being recorded. Please keep your video off and your audio muted unless you are taking part in the discussion at the end