Survey of international experts on research priorities to improve care for healthy ageing

Correspondence to Dr Matteo Cesari; mcesari@who.int Introduction The United Nations (UN) Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030), coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO),1 is a global collaborative initiative aimed at improving the lives of older people, their families and the communities.2 3 The Action Areas 3 (ie, ‘deliver person-centred, integrated care and primary health services responsive to older people’) and 4 (ie, ‘provide access to long-term care (LTC) for older people who need it’) of the Decade’s work programme focus on reorienting health and care systems to promote ‘ageing in place’ and the delivery of personalised interventions in a seamless continuum of care.4 Specific research activities are needed to capture older people’s health and care needs and guide the advocated paradigm shift from a disease-oriented to a more holistic approach.5 Interestingly, one of the enablers included in the Plan of Action of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing points to strengthen data, research and innovation to accelerate innovation.6 Unfortunately, several research issues affect the improvement of care for healthy ageing, and the risk of dispersing resources and generating redundancies is high. Multiple entries referred to specific conditions of older persons, in particular mental health (n=14), frailty (n=11), polypharmacy (n=8) and multimorbidity (n=6). Accelerating towards personalisation of care requires innovation in the research methodology and the nature of data collected. Besides addressing the barriers to developing evidence-based medicine in older persons,9 research should better consider critical determinants of health (eg, age, gender, function, education, wealth) to support better-tailored interventions. [...]more research is needed to improve care for healthy ageing.