Healthy Ageing

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In the context of the 2012 European Year on Active Ageing and Solidarity Between Generations, EuroHealthNet has launched a new website, www.healthyageing.eu, dedicated to showcasing the important role of health promotion in the ageing process.

This website is dedicated to raising awareness of healthy ageing in contributing to a healthier, more active EU population for the future. The new website will highlight key factors such as promoting healthy diets, physical activities, social relations and meaningful activities necessary for ageing healthily throughout a person’s life. It will showcase a number of local, regional and national projects dedicated to promoting older peoples health while also identifying a number of EU policy initiatives and instruments that are available to promote healthy ageing.

Linked to the launch of www.healthyageing.eu, EuroHealthNet, commissioned by the German Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA), has also published a report on Healthy and Active Ageing. The reports highlight a selection of programmes, good practices and other resources for promoting and sustaining the well-being of “younger” older people, with a specific reference to socially deprived and migrant groups.

For more information on both these developments, please contact Karen via k.vandeweghe@eurohealthnet.eu.

Background

The Policy Action Group on Healthy Ageing (PAG HA) was set up to take forward the work of the EU-funded Healthy Ageing project which was formally completed in 2007.

The main objective of the PAG is to keep "Healthy Ageing" on the EU agenda as well as the agenda of governments and public health institutions and others accountable for public health and health promotion. This will be done by promoting the Healthy Ageing project outputs, in particular the set of recommendations. The group was lead by the Stockholm Center for Public Health until March 2009. EuroHealthNet now leads work on the PAG on healthy ageing.

For more information about the PAG on HA you can contact:

Karen Vandeweghe
Network Development and Healthy Ageing Coordinator
EuroHealthNet
k.vandeweghe@eurohealthnet.eu

Recent Publications

The Committee of the Regions, AGE Platform Europe and the European Commission have issued a brochure presenting EU funding possibilities for regional and local initiatives to promote active ageing and solidarity between generations. The brochure aims to make a particular contribution to the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations 2012. The majority of initiatives to promote active ageing – throughout 2012 and onwards – will be taken without financial support from the EU, but in some cases EU funding will play a role. The brochure shows what resources are available and invites regional and local stakeholders to make the best possible use of them, preferably working in partnerships involving several countries. The brochure presents numerous examples of projects which have received EU funding. It also includes short presentations of the most relevant EU funding programmes to support new active ageing projects.

The PAG on Healthy Ageing has produced numerous publications as a result of the Healthy Ageing Project, along with several key reports following up from the project.

Brochure on the European Year 2012 for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations "Everybody has a role to play!"

Policy Precis Series - Making the Link: Healthy Ageing and Health Equity and Making the Link: Pensions and Health Equity

As part of the Policy Precis Series, the Equity Channel produced policy precis' linking health ageing and pension provision with health equity.

Healthy Ageing: A Challenge for Europe

This Summary outlines the challenges faced by an ageing Europe and identifies key actions for Healthy Ageing.

Recommendations for future Healthy Ageing work in Europe

To achieve the aims of this project and to take the work on healthy ageing forward recommendations have been developed. This document outlines future actions in this field.

Activities in 2011

In June 2011, EuroHealthNet was invited to participate in two work to discuss the priority areas of work for the EIP on Active and Healthy Ageing. The workshops focused on prevention, early diagnosis, screening, integrated care, chronic disease management and cost effectiveness. A full meeting report is available in the members section.

On the 29th April 2011, EuroHealthNet along with other members of the coalition for the 2012 EU Year presented the recommendations from its joint brochure at the high level conference "Towards the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations". For more information about EuroHealthNet's participation in this coalition and about the outcomes from the conference, please contact Karen at k.vandeweghe@eurohealthnet.eu.

EuroHealthNet, in collaboration with several active members from the Policy Action Group (PAG), submitted a response on behalf of the network to the European Commission consultation on the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. The response stressed the need to strengthen the health promotion aspects of the initiative will also proposing ideas to promote health through social innovation. A summary and an analysis of all the responses recieved is available on the DG SANCO website. EuroHealthNet's response and a synthesis report based the DG SANCO summary is available on the consultation responses page in member's section.

Activities in 2010

In 2010, EuroHealthNet represented the network at a series of workshops run by the European Commission’s Directorate for Health and Consumer (DG SANCO) entitled “Reflections on Healthy Ageing: Health Systems – Innovations – Consumers”. A full summary of the workshops are available here. In addition, EuroHealtNet presented at a thematic conference held under the Spanish Presidency promoting the Mental Health and Well-being of Older People. More information is available here.

Activities in 2009

This year the work of the Special Interest Group will concentrate on participating in two major conferences within the Swedish EU Presidency (July - December 2009).

In collaborative work with the Swedish National Institute of Public Health the PAG prepared a workshop at the "Conference on Healthy and Dignified Ageing" on 15-16 September and organised the "Conference on Healthy Ageing" on 22-23 October. To prepare the latter event, the Swedish National Institute of Public Health and the PAG carried out a follow-up survey on how healthy ageing work has proceeded in EU Member States which participated in the 2004-2007 EU Healthy Ageing project.

As part of this conference, the participants drew up key messages on policy, practice and research to be adopted by the European Commission to serve as a background to the Commission's communication on ageing and health. During this conference, many good practice examples, from across the EU, were presented; this served as a good base for in-depth discussions with expert stakeholders, which lead to strong policy recommendations.

Please click here for the full report.

Activities in 2008

Activities in 2008 focussed on the fields "lifestyle" and "equity". The PAG organised 3 workshops, which further refined and tested the recommendations of the Healthy Ageing project:

Workshop 1: "Using the (EU Health) strategy to promote equitable healthy ageing" at the joint EuroHealthNet and IUHPE policy seminar "Implementing the new EU Health Strategy", Brussels, 13 March 2008

Workshop 2: "Never too late to invest in health" at the 9th Nordic Public Health Conference, Östersund / Sweden, 9-12 June 2008

Workshop 3: "Health later in life - a participatory approach to promote physical activity for older people in order to maintain a dignified and independent life" at the 8th IUHPE European Conference on Health Promotion and Education, Turin / Italy, 9-13 September 2008

Furthermore the members of the Special Interest Group contributed to the consensus paper "Mental Health in Older People" which was developed as background information paper for the EU high-level conference "Together for Mental Health and Wellbeing", Brussels, 13 June 2008.

Please click here for the consensus paper

The 2008 work of the SIG is compiled in a report which can be found here.

Please find a short summary about the members of the PAG and its work in 2008 here.