People are living longer than ever, but not always healthier. WHO/Europe’s new strategy on healthy ageing aims to close the gap between longevity and well-being while considering what shapes our health throughout life. In this article, Natasha Azzopardi Muscat, Stefania Ilinca and Yongjie Yon, from WHO Europe, discuss how the Strategy was collaboratively developed with stakeholders and why delivering it depends on all of us: from health ministries to local communities.
Longer lives are among the great social and public health achievements of recent generations. Yet the challenge is ensuring that those additional years are healthy and fulfilling. This is the focus of Ageing is Living: a strategy for promoting a lifetime of health and well-being in the WHO European Region 2026–2030, a strategy developed by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe).
The Strategy looks beyond disease alone and considers how health and functional ability as we age are shaped throughout life — by our social and economic circumstances, the health and care we receive, and the environments in which we live.
The Strategy’s vision is a European Region where everyone can age with dignity and purpose, in good health, supported by systems and environments that enable us to do what matters.
A twin-track approach to healthy ageing
The Strategy takes a deliberately twin-track approach: responding to the health and care needs of older people today, including through stronger long-term care and support for caregivers, while acting earlier across the life course to maintain health and functional ability and reduce avoidable care needs in the future.
Healthy ageing cannot be delivered by health services alone. Housing, transport, social protection, labour and the physical and social environment all shape our health and functional ability. This underscores the importance of public health stewardship, the government’s role in safeguarding the population’s health and well-being. Ministries of health cannot deliver everything themselves, but they can convene other sectors and keep health, equity and functional ability visible in wider policy decisions.
Who we ask shapes what we hear
Developing the Strategy also reinforced an important feature of public health governance: who we involve shapes what we see, what we prioritise and, ultimately, what works in practice — something easier said than done. More than 3,000 stakeholders across the WHO European Region contributed to the Strategy, including national, subnational and local authorities, civil society organisations, older persons, academic experts, WHO Collaborating Centres, and UN and EU partners.
The process included mapping and assessing over 90 WHO normative documents through multilingual surveys — involving government-nominated focal points and subnational and local authorities — and testing and refining priorities against country realities, alongside epidemiological, health-systems, and equity analyses. The result was an iterative process through which evidence, feasibility, policy priorities and implementation experience informed one another.
In practice, this was less orderly than the final Strategy might suggest. Different groups emphasised different problems and sometimes different solutions. One recurring question was where the health sector’s responsibility begins and ends. Many of the actions discussed — around housing, transport, social protection, local government or labour policy — sit outside the direct scope of ministries of health, yet they impact health greatly. Working through that question sharpened the Strategy’s emphasis on health-sector stewardship.
National authorities bring responsibility for legislation, financing, governance and system-wide reform. Subnational authorities bring knowledge of delivery contexts and the environments in which policy is implemented. Civil society, older persons and communities bring experience of how policies and services actually feel and work in our everyday lives. Research and technical partners contribute evidence and analytical capacity.
Bringing these perspectives together was not simply about representation: it changed what we saw. Issues that looked straightforward in a technical document became more complicated when tested against country realities and lived experience. Evidence, political feasibility and implementation realities did not always point in the same direction.
From participation to implementation
What matters now is what happens after adoption. WHO/Europe is working with countries and communities to strengthen long-term care, integrated and community-based care, and support for caregivers. We now need to build on this work, scale what works and adapt it to different national and local contexts.
Older persons, caregivers and communities are not simply recipients of policy or care. They are part of the social fabric we all depend on: providing care and support, sustaining social connection and helping shape the places where we live and age. Their role is not only to comment on policy, but to help shape what works in practice.
This is also not only about institutions. In our different roles — as public health professionals, parents, children, siblings and neighbours — we can all influence the environments and networks around us.
Healthy ageing is neither solely an individual responsibility nor solely the job of governments. Ageing is Living is ultimately about all of us, and the task now is to turn the Strategy into practical change in the systems, services and communities that shape how we live and age.
Keep on reading
The Ageing is Living Strategy provides the European Region with a shared direction for healthier ageing. It combines action for older persons today with investment in healthier ageing throughout life. Its four strategic policy actions are (1) prioritising health promotion and disease prevention, (2) transforming health and care systems, (3) creating age-friendly environments, and (4) challenging ageism.
Natasha Azzopardi Muscat
Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat is Director of Health Systems at WHO/Europe. A medical doctor and public health specialist, she has held senior positions in Malta’s Ministry of Health, including Chief Medical Officer, and served as President of the European Public Health Association from 2016 to 2020. She joined WHO/Europe in 2020. She holds a Master’s degree in Health Services Management from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics, and a PhD from Maastricht University. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Malta and a visiting scholar at Maastricht University.
Stefania Ilinca
Stefania Ilinca is Technical Officer for Long-term Care at WHO/Europe. A health economist, she works on long-term care system transformation, integrated and person-centred care, equity in access, and support for formal and informal caregivers. She has extensive experience at the interface of research, policy and practice across Europe and previously worked at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research and Trinity College Dublin. She holds a PhD in health economics and is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health.
Yongjie Yon
Yongjie Yon is Technical Officer on Ageing and Health at WHO/Europe. A gerontologist and public health specialist, his work spans healthy ageing, prevention and health promotion, age-friendly environments and communities, ageism, social connection and abuse of older persons. Before joining WHO, he worked with the Government of Canada on ageing policy. He holds a PhD in Gerontology from the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and was a Doctoral Fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.