GCOA’s Digital Health Working Group (DHWG) brings together members from across sectors to share ideas, initiatives, best practices, and policies related to digital health technologies. The goal of the DHWG is to  advance the application of digital technologies to support healthier aging for more people around the globe. Watch the video below to learn more about some of the exciting work of the DHWG and its members.

In May 2021, the Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) and the Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) hosted a second joint roundtable on the challenges of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in super-aging Japan. The roundtable brought together Japanese and global experts in aging and infectious disease, examining in particular the coupled crises of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and a lack of antibiotic innovation. In November 2021, the two organizations issued a report, “Taking Action for AMR Preparedness: Spurring Antibiotic Innovation for Healthy Ageing in Super-Ageing Japan,” based on the key findings from the roundtable. The report outlines the impact of AMR on older adults and the dire consequences for fiscal sustainability and economic growth while offering a roadmap for urgent action.

In November 2021, GCOA released a report linking 21^st century employer benefits to a new social contract for how to meet growing employee needs in our aging society.

The new report, Shining a Spotlight on Caregiving: Employer Practices Through a Policy Lens, offers five principles that will transform how we understand and approach this topic:

1. Work should not inhibit high quality care, and vice versa.
2. Individuals and families should be able to support themselves financially through all levels of caregiving, both as caregivers and care recipients.
3. All family caregivers should receive sufficient support, regardless of whether they care for children or older family members.
4. Caregiver support policies should help caregivers and care recipients address Covid-19 and recover from long term impacts of the pandemic.
5. Longevity economics will be significantly improved by shining a spotlight on the value added through caregiving activities.

In May 2021, GCOA and the Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) hosted a private roundtable of Japanese and global experts and decision makers to examine the connection between innovation for healthy aging and economic growth in super-aging Japan and other rapidly aging societies across the OECD. The roundtable and subsequent report, released in October 2021 in both English and Japanese, concluded that spending on health innovation must be treated as an investment for the fiscal health of the Japan and similarly aging countries. The expert discussion identified incentives to spur health innovation and support economic growth, which are outlined in the report, Incentivizing Innovation for Healthy Ageing and Economic Growth in Super-Ageing Japan.

The roundtable and report connect to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals, the UN and World Health Organization Decade of Healthy Ageing, and the OECD promotion of lifelong social participation as a 21^stcentury path to achieve healthier and fiscally sound societies. Such sentiments were powerfully echoed during the roundtable and reflected in the report.

This report is based on insights from an expert roundtable held in June 2021. The roundtable brought together Irish and global experts in health, economics, policy making, and advocacy. Roundtable insights focus on three central themes: equity and the right to statutory home care, home care standards to ensure quality, and person-centred, integrated home care, with participants agreeing to nine key recommendations for the Irish Government across the themes:

1. Implement a common, evidence-based and needs-based assessment tool as part of the statutory home care scheme,
2. Invest in needs-based care built on a standard assessment to help provide care recipients and their families with financial certainty and also reduce health system costs,
3. Implement flexible home support services supported by accessible and transparent to ensure citizens can access the care that best reflects their needs and their wishes,
4. Implement regulation to strengthen home care safety and quality standards,
5. Develop regulatory licensing schemes for all home care providers, including the HSE, to ensure standards of care are set, pursued and achieved,
6. Strengthen governance structures to ensure coordinated care across home care providers, health and social care services and care settings,
7. Revise governance and promote training to provide service users with choice about their home support services and enable flexibility in care decisions,
8. Improve home care supports for family carers by increasing the types and availability of services available, and
9. Strengthen provider governance to ensure service user participation in care planning and outcomes-based, collaborative, personalised care planning across the course of one’s life.

Leaders from four Global Coalition on Aging companies – Uber, Bayer, Philips, and Sanofi – sat down with Mike Hodin to talk about digital technologies and how each company is using technology to improve the health and well-being of older adults around the world, from pushing the envelope on what is possible in medical innovation, to expanding the reach of health prevention, to helping manage last mile logistics to better support people in their homes and in their communities.

The video was created by members of GCOA’s Digital Health Working Group as part of the celebration of the 2021 UN International Day of Older Persons – Digital Equity for All Ages.

GCOA is a key partner in the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing Platform. The Platform is an inclusive, collaborative space where all knowledge relevant for the Decade can be accessed, shared, and interacted with in one place by all aging stakeholders around the world. GCOA has not only contributed publications to the Platform but will also play a vital role as a Knowledge Reviewer, helping to evaluate and place submissions to the Platform from other organizations. GCOA was honored to be invited to moderate the official French-language launch of the Platform and to speak on behalf of the private sector at the Spanish-language launch. In total, nearly 1,000 participants from all six WHO regions attended the three launch events in French, Spanish, and English.

Watch the Platform launch event in French:

Watch the Platform launch event in Spanish:

You can view the launch event in English here.

An August 2021 report from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, Living in the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Health, Finances, and Retirement Prospects of Four Generations, examines the experiences four generations – Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers – and the impacts of the pandemic on their health, employment, financial well-being, and their ability to save and invest for retirement. The report finds that despite six in 10 employed workers (60 percent) having made adjustments due to pandemic-related financial strain, 82 percent are saving for retirement.

The global report — Building the Caregiving Workforce Our Aging World Needs — explores the essential truths that must shape the actions of policymakers, healthcare organizations and professionals, NGOs and other public and private stakeholders when they consider the future of the caregiving workforce, and our ability to more effectively serve older adults around the world.

The recommended actions, presented in the study as part of a crucial road map to build a professional global caregiving workforce, include:

1. Change the perception of the caregiving profession – champion campaigns that transform mindsets about caregiving, from a low-skilled job of last resort to a valued, professional career of the future.
2. Bolster training and education standards – if governments and society acknowledge the value of the care workforce, care providers and governments alike will work to establish quality standards.
3. Support and reward professional caregivers commensurate with the demands of the job and the value they provide – employers across public, private and nonprofit sectors must pay more attention to the emotional and financial needs of professional caregivers – especially if they are to attract young, purpose-driven talent.
4. Fully integrate home care workforce into the health and social-care ecosystem – the professional status of home care workers must keep pace with the demand for and value of this type of care.

Proactive Approach to Healthy Aging: The Role of Inflammation Control & Integrated Care examines how targeting chronic inflammation and chronic inflammatory diseases (CIDs) can contribute to healthy aging around the world.

The report offers an important new lens to inform global and national health policy on the biology of aging in the context of the 21^st-century megatrend of aging. It calls for more attention to, further research into and increased leadership for action on the relationship between health innovation and the impact of chronic inflammation and healthier aging.

Aligning with the UN and World Health Organization’s Decade of Healthy Ageing and its focus on integrated care, the report examines how early detection and intervention for chronic inflammation can reduce or reverse damage accrual and lower risk for age-related conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. Chronic inflammatory diseases—such as psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, and axial spondylarthritis (AxSpa)—offer test cases and starting points for this approach. By bringing greater urgency to better monitoring, earlier detection and diagnosis, more effective treatment is likely to follow, with positive effects on the process of aging. Moreover, health systems can seize an important opportunity to underpin healthier aging, especially for women who often face disparities in disease burden and care. This can lead to greater health systems’ preparedness and resilience and therefore better fiscal management.

The Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) released  Employers’ Role in the COVID-19 Environment: Winning in the Vastly Changed World of Work. It highlights the unique convergence between the megatrend of aging and the COVID-19 pandemic in the workplace and offers insights to inform employers’ public health and workforce strategies at this intersection.

The Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) released  Employers’ Role in the COVID-19 Environment: Winning in the Vastly Changed World of Work. It highlights the unique convergence between the megatrend of aging and the COVID-19 pandemic in the workplace and offers insights to inform employers’ public health and workforce strategies at this intersection.  Chief among the report’s key findings is the guidance to all employers “to elevate public health as a central feature of their culture and embed it into management.”

The report is based on multiple virtual roundtables from late March to December 2020, desk research, and supplemental interviews, analysis and insight development with experts within GCOA’s network.

GCOA has been working with employers for 10 years to navigate the changing workplace and business environment brought by profound aging demographic shifts, which will continue for decades to come. From healthcare to the workplace, aging is the megatrend requiring major changes across society, and COVID-19, as with so much else, has become the accelerator for this trend.

The AMR Preparedness Index is a first-of-its-kind evaluation of how the governments of the 11 largest global economies are living up to their commitments to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Released amid increasing recognition of the threat posed by the “silent pandemic” of antimicrobial resistance at the highest levels of government, most recently at the G7 Summit in Cornwall, the report identifies a broad failure to match public promises with the concrete actions needed to avert the growing crisis. The index assessed the 11 largest global economies: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). The report also offers case studies from Australia, Kenya, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden. The UK and US topped the Index list.

Critical opportunities for government action identified in the Index include to:

• Strengthen and fully implement national AMR strategies
• Raise awareness of AMR and its consequences, while targeting prevention opportunities
• Bolster surveillance and leverage data across AMR efforts
• Enable a restructured antimicrobial marketplace to stimulate innovation
• Promote responsible and appropriate use of antibiotics
• Enable reliable and consistent access to needed and novel antimicrobials
• More effectively integrate the One Health approach, including environmental considerations arising from human, veterinary, and agricultural use of antibiotics, into national strategies
• Better engage with other governments, third-party organizations, and advocacy groups

The Global Alliance on Heart Failure and Healthy Aging report, Undiagnosed Heart Failure: A Growing Public Health Risk and Looming Financial Iceberg for Aging Societies, examines the link between aging and heart failure, recognizing that a significant portion of heart failure deaths occurs in the older population. By applying predictive data modeling to heart failure trends in G7 countries, EU countries, China, and India—all aging societies—the report underscores the critical need for actions on heart failure, including timely diagnosis, at all stages of the life course.

The report provides illustrative calculations to help quantify the growing burden of heart failure deaths—related to the aging of the population in the next two decades—and its impacts on public health and health systems.

The Global Alliance on Heart Failure and Healthy Aging is a GCOA initiative.

For the second year in a row, GCOA collaborated with ITU’s WSIS Forum to create the Special Track on ICTs and Older Persons.

During a full week of engaging panel discussions, GCOA brought together experts from across sectors to talk about the most critical priorities and exciting developments in information and communications technologies that serve older adults. As part of the Special Track on ICTs and Older Persons, GCOA and WSIS established a special prize in 2021 entitled the WSIS Healthy Ageing Innovation Prize, focused on ICTs that specifically address the needs of people 60+ to achieve and sustain an active and engaged life as they age.

WSIS and GCOA also co-organized a virtual hackathon, Ageing Better With ICTs. Participating teams from more than 50 countries developed ideas and demonstrated proof of concept in one of four challenge areas: Alzheimer’s Disease and Cognitive Decline, Frailty, Transportation and Mobility, and Financial Tools for Longevity.

Click here for more information and to watch the announcement of the winners of the Special Prize and the Ageing Better With ICTs Hackathon at the High-Level Dialogue: Ageing in a Digital World.

Throughout 2020 and beyond, aging has been at top of the agenda for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). GCOA has worked with the OECD on aging for many years. Together, GCOA and OECD have jointly organized several expert consultations and workshops examining a range of critical topics through the aging lens:

Alzheimer’s and Big Data
Silver Economy
Aging and the Digital Economy
Internet of Things and Wellness Ecosystem

In 2021, GCOA partnered with the NYC Department for the Aging and NYU Silver School of Social Work on the two-part interactive Moving Beyond Ageism Summit. In the two sessions – which took place in March and April, aligned to the launch of the first-ever UN/WHO Global report on ageism – experts from across industries and sectors discussed how to tackle ageism and take concrete steps towards equity for all ages, with examples from New York City and around the world.

Ageism is the last acceptable form of discrimination. It has major impacts on income, health, livelihood, economic growth and more. Aging happens to all of us starting the moment we are born, so we need to embrace it and respect it. Session panelists of all different ages working in various industries are working to end ageism in the workplace, in the community, in the healthcare setting, as well as internalized ageism. Actions that attendees can take moving forward from the Summit include calling out ageism, sharing resources, engaging with intergenerational activities and reaching out to legislators.

Click here to watch the first session on Vimeo.

Click here to watch the second session on Vimeo.

GCOA created a playbook, Building Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccination: A Playbook for Age-Friendly Cities, to help Age-friendly Cities and Communities around the world address community concerns and increase confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines.

This report summarizes key takeaways from our October 2020 virtual roundtable on health innovation and economic growth in Japan. The report highlights the importance of health innovation in Japan and in ageing societies around the world. GCOA and the Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) co-organized the roundtable, which was sponsored by Pfizer Japan. The roundtable was the first in a series on healthy ageing, innovation, and the silver economy led by GCOA and the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD).

Click here to read the full press release in English.

Click here to read the full press release in Japanese.