Health Care and Public Health Systems for Healthy Longevity: A Workshop for the Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity Initiative

When: February 3, 2020 (8:30 AM UTC+8) – February 4, 2020 (5:00 PM UTC+8)

Where: Singapore

This 2-day workshop examined potential approaches and reforms across the entire spectrum of norms, institutions, and systems that provide health- and social-related services to address the multidimensional needs of older populations. Workshop participants discussed the challenges and opportunities, as well as potential solutions that would enhance the design of health and long-term care systems, including clinical services, health promotion, disease prevention services, and social care to foster the capacity and ability of aging societies around the world.

Specifically, this workshop featured invited presentations and discussions on topics including:

• Existing evidence on the strengths and weaknesses of the entire spectrum of norms, institutions, and systems providing health care, health promotion, and preventive services for aging populations, including clinical care provided in primary, secondary, and tertiary settings, self-care, community-based services, and social care and support. These discussions will also identify the potential for innovative new approaches in these areas;
• Critical challenges and gaps in current approaches for ensuring an appropriately skilled and sustainable workforce, including informal caregivers, to address the needs of older adults;
• Key successes and failures of policies and programs targeting access to and quality of health care, health promotion, and preventive services across the life course that affect healthy longevity;
• Health financing and policy tools to guide effective multi-sectoral solutions and actions to reform service delivery, public health systems, and community capacity in ways that will that have a positive impact on aging;
• The potential for new data approaches, health information tools and innovations to transform health systems and health promotion and prevention services; and
• Effective mechanisms for stimulating meaningful collaboration among relevant stakeholders across sectors and disciplines.

Workshop speakers and discussants contributed perspectives from government, academia, private, civil society, and nonprofit sectors from the local to global levels. Proceedings of the presentations and discussions at the workshop will be published in 2020.

This workshop is the second of three that will inform the Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity initiative, part of the National Academy of Medicine’s Healthy Longevity Global Grand Challenge.

For more information, contact Maureen Henry, initiative director, at MHenry@nas.edu.