Social and Geographic Disparities in Healthy Aging
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Global Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 1910
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The global population of adults aged 60 and older is rapidly expanding, largely due to the success of public health interventions focused earlier in the lifecourse, such as those that reduce maternal and child deaths [1]. However, increased longevity has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in “healthspan”—or the period of years spent free of disease and disability—and substantial social and geographic disparities in “healthspan” present a new public health challenge [2].
In this issue, we invite studies from a wide range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives that build a scientific understanding of risk and resilience for healthy aging, and inform public health strategies that promote healthy aging equity both locally and globally. We conceptualize healthy aging not explicitly as “healthspan”, but also as having the capacity to live an enriched and fulfilling life even in the presence of disease and disability. As such, achieving healthy aging equity requires an awareness of lifecourse processes and context-specific social and structural determinants of health, and we encourage studies that include these perspectives [3].
References
- United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Ageing 2023: Challenges and opportunities of population ageing in the least developed countries. 2023. Available online: https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/launch-World-Population-Ageing-2023 (accessed on 17 February 2025).
- Garmany, A.; Yamada, S.; Terzic, A. Longevity leap: Mind the healthspan gap. NPJ Regen. Med. 2021, 6, 57. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41536-021-00169-5.
- Jones, N.L.; Gilman, S.E.; Cheng, T.L.; Drury, S.S.; Hill, C.V.; Geronimus, A.T. Life Course Approaches to the Causes of Health Disparities. Am. J. Public Health 2019, 109(S1), S48–S55. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304738.
Dr. Rachel Lynne Peterson
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- aging
- gerontology
- health disparities
- health equity
- physical environment
- social determinants of health
- social environment
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