What Does “Healthy Aging” Actually Mean? New AGS Report Looks for Answers

“Healthy aging” sounds like a priority we all can share, but for geriatrics health care professionals that term represents something specific and something worth defining. Care professionals from the American Geriatrics Society (AGS), led by Paul Mulhausen, MD, MHS, FACP, AGSF, set about doing just that by convening an expert panel to look critically at the definition of “healthy aging” and the strategies that can make it possible. Their work—published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society—explores the intersection between our personal care goals and innovations in science, education, and public policy as the place where healthy aging may be understood best.

“Longer life is a priority for individuals and society because it provides opportunities for personal fulfillment and contributions to our communities. But as we learn more about concrete ways to increase longevity,” Dr Mulhausen observed, “we need to work on ways to improve the quality of that time as well.”

According to the AGS expert panel, increased longevity means that achieving “healthy aging” today must stem from a broader, person-centered notion of health—as something more than the absence of disease or infirmity. Healthy aging involves pivoting to age’s influence on our physical, mental, and social needs and expectations, ultimately embracing a “lifespan approach” to care that helps each aging person live the healthiest life possible. This new focal point necessitates replacing our current cultural emphasis on staying young “with age-friendly concepts of engagement, participation, contribution, interconnectedness, activity, and optimal function,” as the AGS white paper explains.

Healthy aging also extends beyond clinical services, embracing a complex and interconnected ecosystem that both impacts and is impacted by how we grow older. In this respect, AGS experts highlight several priority areas where communities, health systems, and clinicians can work together to integrate services that foster engagement and independence for us all as we age. These include:

Greater advocacy supporting policy solutions for older people. Healthy aging requires a coordinated response not only to care but also to community priorities that can promote health, safety, and independence. For the AGS expert panel, this means collaborating as advocates across society and professions to align our health systems with the needs of older people while also promoting healthy aging when we are younger.

Better public and professional education to make healthy aging an actionable priority. Care that can promote healthy aging rests on ensuring future generations of health professionals and older adults understand and embrace best practices focused on keeping us healthy and independent. This can become even more of a reality today by working early and often to combat ageism, particularly when it comes to older adults’ self-perceptions.

A deeper commitment to the geriatrics expertise we need as we age. Embracing biology, psychology, and sociocultural considerations to optimize functional status must remain a top healthy-aging priority.

Renewed attention to social and scientific research that can build our understanding of what healthy aging really means. Research on aging at the cellular, individual, and community levels represents one of our best opportunities for advancing healthy aging. “We also need better evidence to inform our understanding of the biomedical and psychosocial determinants of healthy aging. We must bridge the gap between promising basic research and its clinical application,” the AGS experts conclude.

The full AGS white paper is available for free at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jgs.15644.