Dear Colleagues,

The concept of active aging derives from the Active Aging policy framework by the World Health Organization (WHO) issued already in 2002. The WHO conceptualized active aging as community participation according to a person’s needs, desires, and capabilities. Empirically, the concept has been actualized in research as a multicomponent state, including a set of variables from health and cognition to different psychological and social aspects (Paúl et al. 2012). However, the problem with this kind of approaches is that they do not see active aging as something to be reached by most older people, despite, e.g., health problems or psychological and social stress factors. Thus, a recent approach to active aging has adopted a more individual view in defining active aging as the striving for self-selected activities in line with one’s goals, functional capacities, and opportunities (Rantanen et al. 2019). Thus, the core of active aging would be to live one’s life as one wants, taking into account one’s capacities and opportunities. Since loss of resources, e.g., in health and social relations is common in old age, this may require the ability to cope with losses, e.g., by modifying one’s goals. Everything may not be possible anymore, but since the adoption of the new active aging approach, active aging may still be possible with a different set of goals and activities.

Research on active aging has centered on examining, e.g., physical activity or different health behaviors that are linked to health outcomes and therefore assumed to increase active aging. This Special Issue calls for papers investigating active aging from a variety of different perspectives. Emphasis is put on original research papers addressing the very core of active aging, i.e., in older people’s possibilities to live a meaningful life according to their preferences. However, due to the multidisciplinary nature of active aging, papers covering different approaches to, e.g., participation and overall wellbeing in old age are welcome. In addition, a life course approach to active aging with longitudinal designs on examining the antecedents of active aging would be highly appreciated.

References:

Paúl C., Ribeiro O, Teixeira L. (2012). Active ageing: An empirical approach to the WHO model. Current Gerontology & Geriatric Research. doi:10.1155/2012/382972

Rantanen T, Portegijs E, Kokko K et al (2019) Developing an assessment method of active aging: University of Jyvaskyla active aging scale. J Aging Health. doi: 10.1177/08982 64317750449

Dr. Milla Saajanaho
Guest Editor

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• active aging
• participation
• activity
• well-being
• coping
• life course