Old and New Challenges For Healthy Ageing webinar

Speaker

Scientia Professor Kaarin Anstey
Director, UNSW Ageing Futures Institute, Co-Deputy Director, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing

Abstract

Individuals and governments are increasingly focused on strategies to deliver healthy ageing. As our population ages, there is a need to limit the potential costs of an ageing population due to disability and poor health, and a need to increase the productivity of older adults, to reap what has been described as a ‘longevity dividend’. However, society currently faces several challenges that need to be addressed if we are to adapt to ageing and deliver on the future potential of longevity. Some of these challenges are not new but they are impacted by our changing world, and we haven’t yet found ways to solve them. These include the challenge of cognitive decline, which impacts every aspect of our lives, and increased frailty, reduced mobility, and resulting risk of injury, with age. The new challenges relate to contemporary social issues and technology and include climate change, the need to embrace and understand diversity; to incorporate both individual and population level approaches, and the need for social meaning and close relationships in a world where we are more connected but less close to each other.