Fostering resilience, promoting health and preventing disease in older adults

Abstract

OVERVIEW This chapter examines how the health status (and with it life expectancy) of older adults can be improved through primary prevention (the use of health promotion and protection against diseases). Chapter 4 examines the same issue through secondary and tertiary prevention. Successful ageing is seen primarily in terms of resilience, and factors affecting health (e.g. environmental, cultural, gender-related and genetic) are explored. Introduction Living is not the good, but living well. The wise man therefore lives as long as he should, not as long as he can. He will observe where he is to live, with whom, how, and what he is to do. He will always think of life in terms of quality, not quantity. Seneca By 2020, the world population of people age 60 and older is expected to reach 1 billion, with over 700 million in the developing world (World Health Organization (WHO), 1999). As the world's population ages, there is increasing interest in the concept of successful ageing. However, no consensus exists on what this constitutes: although criteria usually include concepts such as low probability of disease and disease-related disability, high cognitive and physical functional capacity, and active engagement with life (Rowe and Kahn, 1987), surveys of older adults suggest they might judge success differently.