The World Health Organization on healthy ageing
World Health Organization · Its healthy ageing framework, in guidance since 2017.
The WHO defines healthy ageing not as the absence of disease but as keeping the ability to do the things you value. It measures that through five capacities which together describe what a person can actually do. The framework matters because it moved the question from what someone has been diagnosed with to what they are still able to do, which are not the same thing and often diverge - a person with three diagnoses may be walking, cooking and seeing friends, and a person with none may not be.
The five capacities it measures
- 01Locomotion - walking, balance, getting about
- 02Vitality - nutrition and energy
- 03Cognition - memory and thinking
- 04Psychological - mood and outlook
- 05Sensory - hearing and vision
What this changes here
Our reading, not theirs.
This is the framework behind our functional assessments. It is also the reason we measure the senses and mood alongside strength and memory rather than treating them as someone else's department. Our twelve topics are a longer list than the WHO's five, because ours include the risks to prevent as well as the capacities to keep, but the five sit inside them.
The topics this bears on
Where to go next
The other work we read