AGE discusses policy innovation for active and healthy ageing at WHO Europe Workshop

By endorsing the WHO Global strategy and action plan on ageing and health (2016-2020), Member States of the WHO European Region committed to establishing a system for providing long-term care in each country. This commitment was further reinforced in 2016, by the endorsement of the WHO European Framework for Action on Integrated Health Services Delivery to strengthen people-centred health systems. Support from the WHO Regional Office for Europe to develop long-term care strategies, policies, action plans as well as their implementation is currently the most frequent request from countries in the policy field of ageing. A large majority of Member States of the WHO European Region has addressed respective policy gaps in recent years. To support these developments, the Regional Office has made progress in developing models and tools for assessing the integrated delivery of health and social services for long-term care.

From national to global perspective

In order to take stock of the progress made so far on active and healthy ageing in the WHO European Region and to pave the way for future progress, notably to feed in the forthcoming Decade of Healthy Ageing (2020-2030), a workshop was organised in Moscow 26-27 February 2019. More than 60 participants coming from 32 Member States or from European and International Organisations, as well as from the academic sector or Civil Society Organisation met to exchange about their work.

AGE was invited to participate to this workshop to present its work in relation to care starting with the promotion of age-friendly environment but also covering the issue of long-term care, as well as the strong advocacy work done to fight ageism and promote a rights-based approach to ageing issues.

The two-day event strongly demonstrated how much interconnection from the local to the global level is crucial to make progress toward active and healthy ageing. While the actions at local level are playing a key role to meet the needs and concerns of older persons, the need for a strong policy framework at national and global level is important to support the work at grassroots level.

AGE has a longstanding relationship with the WHO both at global and European Level. It has been officially recognized as an affiliated programme to the WHO Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities, and collaborated on a regular basis with the Regional Office for Europe notably on long-term care issues.

For more information, please contact Julia Wadoux, Julia.wadoux@age-platform.eu