In this Lancet Comment, Professor Dame Theresa Marteau, Professor Martin White and colleagues explain how increases in healthy life expectancy for the poorest as well as the rich might be achieved, in the context of an expected new prevention strategy for England setting out how the UK Government seeks to achieve life expectancy goals it articulated in 2018.

The Health Secretary announced then that the Government would aim to increase healthy life expectancy by at least 5 extra years by 2035 for England, and to reduce the gap in life expectancy between richest and poorest population groups.

Although Professor Marteau and colleagues explain that the Government’s aim of 5 extra years by 2035 is not realistic, they argue that population level interventions targeting the leading causes of years of life lost in England – tobacco use, unhealthy diet, alcohol consumption, and physical inactivity – could make a major contribution to such a target, if political leadership and public acceptability could be achieved in the face of competing commercial interests.

Read the Comment in The Lancet