Remarks by President McAleese at the launch of the Lifeways Cross Generational Study
Remarks by President McAleese at the launch of the Lifeways Cross Generational Study by the Health Research Board Unit
Dia dhibh a cairde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo libh ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
I am delighted to be here today, and I would like in particular to thank Ruth Barrington for inviting me to launch the findings of the research programme of the Health Research Board’s Unit for Health Status and Health Gain. This is the second event related to health research that I have attended this month, a sign, I think, of the vibrancy and extent of health research in Ireland.
This Unit has its roots in a Department of Health and Children publication entitled “Shaping a Healthier Future”, and since 1999 that is what you have been helping to deliver by using the best of scholarship, advocacy and research to chart the way.
As our country has become wealthier we have become more preoccupied with our health, more educated about it and in more of a position to invest in our future wellbeing. The Unit for Health Status and Health Gain is a very good example of such investment. What is particularly encouraging about the Unit’s work is the wide-angle lens it shines on the problems it addresses, bringing together, just as this symposium does, a range of disciplines, angles, experiences and perspectives, so that the issues are analysed in their broadest and most informative context. This culture of wide collaboration is key to finding effective solutions to the problems that stand between us and our health and we are grateful to those who forego the old vanities that built barricades between disciplines, professions and stakeholder groups, in order to encourage the easy free flow between all the constituencies who have a significant role to play in constructing that healthier future which is our shared ambition and goal.
These are very heady times in Ireland, utterly different from any period ever experienced in our history. We have never had such a level of economic success, never had such an inflow of new citizens, never had such a mix of cultures, never had such a highly-educated, high-achieving generation before. It’s a generation that has resolved many of the once apparently intractable problems that held us back from our full potential, including the centuries-old political conflict which led to partition. This generation now has access to information about its health that no other generation has ever had. We know about the link between smoking and lung cancer, between alcohol and foetal damage, between cannabis and mental ill-health, between sugar and fat and obesity, between exercise and general health, between poverty and poor diet, between wealth and dangerous diet.
Other generations may have guessed at links between their habits and health outcomes but we have access to the research that shows us the incontrovertible evidence. Helping us to cut, by the shortest way, to the improved health that all of us desire is the work of this dedicated research unit.
The Unit’s findings will help service providers to adapt effectively and confidently to the rapidly changing environment in which they now operate. It will also help us to target intelligently specific areas of need, especially among disadvantaged and marginalised groups who present deep-rooted difficulties, the very people who can get overlooked in broad-sweep approaches. The Unit’s consideration of public policy in relation to the health of older persons is particularly welcome. It’s an area that will reward the kind of painstaking analysis that your expertise can provoke. The vulnerability of many elderly to elder abuse, to suicide, to social isolation, to depression, merits our concern and our insistent pursuit of answers that make a difference.
Health research offers us answers that can and do make a big difference whether in the development of new treatments or new policies, new resources or new facilities. The evidence is already in that the improved health care we have already been the beneficiaries of, is allowing most of us to live longer and better than any past generation.
Through its work, the Unit provides the information we need to keep us informed about our health status, to measure it against the past and also to measure it against the world around us. It tells us a lot about ourselves and about how well we as individuals are using the information that is being made available to us. For at the end of the day healthcare demands a serious level of personal responsibility as well as professional and political responsibility. Used well the information and wisdom and insight you help reveal to us has the potential to take us to that healthier future sooner rather than later.
Professor Cecily Kelleher and the entire Unit deserve our gratitude and our congratulations for everything they have done over the years to bring to fruition this extremely valuable report. I commend every organisation and individual involved in this work for your valuable work and your commitment.
Comhghairdeachas libh go léir agus go raibh maith agaibh.