New York, NEW YORK (July 14, 2020) – The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and the Global Coalition on Aging today released a report, Adult Vaccinations: Opportunities for Action, Barriers to Engagement, Paths to Healthier Aging. The new report shares insights from an expert symposium hosted by the two organizations in late 2019 on the urgency of vaccinations for adults to promote healthy aging.

In this video, IAPB Head of Policy and Advocacy Jessica Crofts-Lawrence interviews Michael Hodin, CEO, Global Coalition on Aging, as he discusses the strong link between vision health and active aging, and the health consequences of COVID-19 on those with age-related eye conditions.

With unprecedented efforts and resources put behind the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, there are good reasons to believe that one will be discovered. But even once such a vaccine is discovered, a very large part of the population will need to make use of it for the virus to die out.

We have been preparing for COVID-19 but just didn’t know it. While not explicitly designed for this pandemic, key healthcare advances like remote care, home care and pharmaceutical innovation now put our health ecosystem in the position of scaling solutions that would not have been possible otherwise.

The New Social Contract: Empowering individuals in a transitioning world, a global survey report published by Aegon in 2019, identifies people’s top four current life priorities as: being healthy and fit (62%), enjoying life (59%), planning for their financial future (49%), and focusing on family (45%). Since the end of last year, the entire world has been upended by COVID-19.