VitaMins Health: Physical activity – are you sitting comfortably?
8 December 2020
Sedentary lifestyles are on the rise. More and more people are sitting down on the commute, sitting down at work and sitting down for leisure.
VitaMins: Society of Actuaries’ MP-2020
19 November 2020
How long people are expected to live (their longevity) is a crucial assumption for actuaries calculating the future liabilities of pension plans and books of life or health insurance policies.
COVID-19: news bulletin #2
23 October 2020
COVID-19 is having a significant effect on mortality in 2020. It is clear that this year’s extreme events have affected different populations across the country in different ways, but how will the pandemic affect longevity in the longer-term?
VitaMins: Representativeness of data
6 October 2020
With most of the world still in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, much attention is now focused on the development of a safe and effective vaccine. Never in our memories have clinical trials received so many column inches and the subject of representativeness of sample data is top of many minds.
COVID-19: news bulletin #1
11 September 2020
In addition to Club Vita’s webinars and written articles on COVID-19, our attention is now turning to our own research. These newsletters will give you an update on our current thinking and progress with this research.
VitaMins: How different American states have experienced COVID-19 so far
21 August 2020
In this article Erik Pickett and Dan Reddy explore how COVID-19 is being experienced differently across the different states of America.
VitaMins Health: Mental health – looking after body and mind
18 June 2020
It is widely accepted that the mind and body are closely interlinked. In this article we look at the link between mental and physical health patterns and how these may influence future longevity trends.
Club Vita’s business response to the COVID-19 pandemic
16 March 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most serious health emergencies of modern times. We recognize that COVID-19 is affecting the physical, mental and financial well-being of many, particularly workers in the healthcare, travel and hospitality sectors. While you will have more important issues arising from COVID-19, I write to let you know how Club Vita is adjusting its working practices to meet the challenge, particularly our implementation of “social distancing” to help protect the most vulnerable in our society.
VitaMins Health: Vitamin D: The “sunshine” vitamin
3 March 2020
Dietary sources of Vitamin D are limited, with around 90% of our usual intake coming from sunlight. Does our current lifestyle and diet through the winter months provide us with sufficient resources for a long and healthy life? In this edition of VitaMins Health we focus on Vitamin D and whether action is required to combat deficiency.
VitaMins: A tale of two Springfields
18 October 2019
Springfield, Virginia and Springfield, Missouri share the same name, but they don’t share much else. In this edition of VitaMins, we explore the differences using Club Vita's US longevity map.
VitaMins Health: Getting clued up on flu
3 October 2019
Every year significantly more people die during the winter months than at other times of the year, and recently we have seen huge variability in ‘excess winter deaths’, potentially impacted by the severity of the flu. In this issue of VitaMins Health, we explore the subject of flu.
Zooming in on ZIP codes
7 August 2019
How long retirees live is a key assumption when valuing pension promises. There is ever stronger evidence of variation in lifespan across US society. Given that differences in life expectancy are recognized to be largely driven by lifestyle rather than genetic make-up, how can plan sponsors tailor their longevity assumptions to reflect the characteristics of their participants?
VitaMins Health: Sleep - Putting a number on slumber
17 June 2019
Health behaviors and levels of morbidity are key drivers for future mortality rates and can be thought of as key components of the “longevity pipeline”. The levels of health and morbidity in a population today will be stored up and reflected in how long people live in the future. In this edition of VitaMins Health we explore the subject of sleep.
Vitamins Health: Genetic testing – panacea or dystopia?
15 March 2019
Health behaviours and levels of morbidity are key drivers for future mortality rates and can be thought of as key components of the “longevity pipeline”. The levels of health and morbidity in a population today will be stored up and reflected in how long people live in the future. In this edition of VitaMins Health we explore the subject of genetic testing.
VitaMins: Gaming the longevity lottery - the search for the causes of longevity variations
22 May 2017
Two recent pieces of research really move on our understanding, taking the lengthy investigation in an unexpected direction. Since the 1960s, public health research has suggested that differences in lifestyles (smoking, drinking, diet and exercise) explain much of the variation in postcode longevity. Of course, these statistics are merely saying that the habits of people living in certain areas are associated with low or high life expectancy, and don’t prove beyond reasonable doubt that the habits are necessarily causing the variation in life expectancy.