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Research carried out from 2003 by Currie (Maxwell Institute) and his PhD students Djeundje, Kirkby and Richards (also Longevitas), and international collaborators Eilers and Durban, created new, flexible smoothing and forecasting methods. These methods are now widely used by insurance and pension providers to forecast mortality when determining pricing and reserving strategy for pensions. The methods were incorporated by the SME Longevitas in its forecasting package Projections Toolkit launched in 2009. This generated impact in the form of £400K turnover for Longevitas in licensing and consultancy fees, with further impact on the pricing and reserving strategies on Longevitas's customers. Since 2010 the methods have been adopted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to make the forecasts required to underpin public policy in pensions, social care and health and by The Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) to model and provide forecasts on mortality to the pensions and insurance industries. As a result, the research has changed practices in these advisory agencies and in the insurance industry.
The research has vastly extended the range and improved the quality of evidence pertaining to pauper lives in Britain the early modern era. Through conserving, contextualising and presenting this cultural heritage in an accessible form, vast amounts of information on pauper's lives are widely and quickly available to interested users, some of whom previously had little or no access to this data. Beneficiaries include the general public, professionals and academics worldwide.
Research carried out by Cairns (Maxwell Institute), Blake (Cass Business School) and Dowd (Nottingham, now Durham) in 2006 produced the `CBD' model for predicting future life expectancy. The CBD model and its extensions developed in 2009 by Cairns and collaborators have had a major impact on pensions and life industry risk management practices: multinational financial institutions [text removed for publication] and other stakeholders have relied on the CBD model to risk assess, price and execute financial deals [text removed for publication] since 2010. CBD is also used by risk management consultants to advise clients, is embedded in both open-source and commercial software, and is used by the UK's Pension Protection Fund to measure and manage longevity risk.
Capewell's MRC/EU/NIHR funded IMPACT programme has been developed at the University of Liverpool (UoL) since 1999. It examines why cardiovascular disease (CVD) death rates have recently halved in the UK, USA and Europe (mainly risk factor improvements plus modern treatments), and why CVD rates are increasing in China and most developing countries (adverse risk factor trends reflecting a Westernised diet). Results have informed CVD prevention strategies in the UK and beyond, notably NICE Guidance on CVD prevention in whole populations. The strong NICE recommendations on diet and tobacco were recently endorsed in NICE Commissioning Guidance and European and American guidance.
Research in the MONICA project set the standards for national cardiovascular health surveys in Europe, by establishing quality assessment benchmarks for how cardiovascular health should be monitored in populations. These standards were subsequently adopted by the European Union, and by local health bodies, to improve their commissioning decisions. This research has had an important impact on public health monitoring, enabling robust epidemiological comparisons across countries and the sort of analysis that policy makers need to inform the balance between primary and secondary prevention for cardiovascular health.
The Life Market is a major new global capital market for transferring longevity risk from corporate pension plans and annuity providers to long-term capital market investors, such as sovereign wealth funds and endowments, in exchange for a longevity risk premium (paid to the investors by the institutions laying off their longevity risk). Previously, the only source of longevity risk hedging was the insurance industry which, given that so many people are living much longer than anticipated, now has insufficient capacity to deal with this risk (estimated at $25trillion) on a global basis. The size of their future pension liabilities now present serious threats to the solvency of many companies. The longevity bonds and swaps designed by Professor David Blake at the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School, City University London, were integral to the creation and operation of the Life Market. The adoption of these bonds and swaps by investors has served to establish a global capital market investor base contributing towards the long-term availability of longevity solutions, benefiting the insurance and pensions industries, employers and, in turn, employees through greater security of their pensions in retirement.
In November 2008, Professor Sir Michael Marmot and his team at UCL were asked by the Secretary of State for Health to chair an independent review to propose the most effective evidence-based strategies for reducing health inequalities in England. The Marmot Review, published in 2010, has fundamentally shifted discourse on health inequalities in the UK and internationally. It has shaped public health services across England and around the world, guided government and international policy, and has given rise to a new commitment from service providers and health professionals to reducing health inequalities and addressing the social determinants of health.
UCL research, from the Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, has underpinned the Health Survey for England's (HSE) role in informing obesity policy in England. HSE data quantified the extent and escalation of obesity within the population as a whole as well as specific sub-groups, resulting in this issue being given significant attention in government. HSE data has underpinned strategy development, the modelling of future scenarios, the identification of inequalities, and the creation of clinical guidance. HSE data has showed early indications that the focus on childhood obesity is paying off, with wider evaluation shifting further strategy work to adults. HSE data has also played a role in this area, defining the adult target group for the Change4Life programme. Furthermore, HSE data are underpinning new agreements with the food industry through the Responsibility Deal.
Events in the UK NHS have shown the need for a robust understanding of hospital mortality rates.
Surrey's research produced "a unique web-enabled pattern analysis system that is specifically designed to enable clinicians and their teams to view in detail their in-house mortality patterns in the national context" (a).
Launched on a national scale in Ireland in 2013, it has already identified `mortality outliers' and been described as a `game changer' for improving service quality at national level. The tool's impact stems from its ability to translate statistical patterns into a form readily usable by health professionals to improve care quality and sharing best practice.
Pickett and Wilkinson's research, summarised in The Spirit Level (Penguin), argued that the level of income inequality in rich, developed market democracies strongly influences their performance on a wide range of health and social indicators. Since 2009, the book has contributed to a significant shift in public debate across the world — at grassroots level, in the media and in legislative assemblies — and has shaped political thinking, legislation and policy making.