Life course

WHO/Y. Shimizu 2016
Rehabilitation services at Medical Corporation SEIWAKAI, Japan. 2016

A life course approach to health aims to ensure people’s well-being at all ages by addressing people’s needs, ensuring access to health services, and safeguarding the human right to health throughout their life time.

Areas of work

Ensuring healthy lives at all ages

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) for 2030 is to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”, a goal that crosscuts with the other SDGs. A life course approach includes a good start to life, optimal development (of infants, children, adolescents and youth), adult health and well-being, healthy ageing (inclusive of older people) and a dignified death at any age.”

Areas of work

Bringing together the building blocks for universal health coverage

We bring together the building blocks for universal health coverage (UHC), centred on health systems strengthening and primary health care (PHC). This ensure alignment between the systems, financing and workforce needed.

Our work is aimed at strengthening service delivery in countries for more impact, with a people-centred focus which is built from strong PHC. It emphasizes addressing people’s health needs across life phases, including maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, and healthy adulthood and ageing. It also relates to specific health concerns including sexual and reproductive health and rights, communicable and non-communicable diseases, gender-based violence, and immunization.

Areas of work

Supporting the work of countries

WHO’s UHC Compendium of Interventions includes packages of evidence-based, people-centered, integrated and cost-effective health interventions across the life course and specific health programmes as a resource for national health plans and insurance strategies.

We also work with countries to address multisectoral risk factors, including those related to equity, gender inequality, human rights, clean air, water and energy and other social and environmental determinants that affect people’s health and well-being.

Universal Health Coverage Day

Annually 12 December

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Featured activities

Overview

With the adoption of the United Nation's (UN) Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030) by the 75th General Assembly on 14 December 2020 and by the 73rd World Health Assembly on 3 August 2020, countries have committed to 10 years of concerted and collaborative actions to improve the lives of the older people (defined as age 60 years and over), their families and the communities in which they reside.

WHO ageing data portal stores and displays country, regional and global data on important ageing health indicators. (Access ageing country profiles). However, there is a greater need to review existing indicators and identify the measurement gaps to strengthen monitoring and evaluation activities of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. Many indicators need to be operationalized from a programmatic perspective for the actions areas, and guidance on measures, data collection, analysis and reporting is urgently needed to support global, regional and national monitoring of the actions, programmes and policies.

Making progress on Healthy Ageing will require a far better understanding of age-related issues and trends. Three approaches will be crucial for improving measurement of ageing and health.

These are:

agreeing on metrics, measures and analytical approaches;
monitoring trajectories across the different population groups, including variation across and within countries; and
conducting research to ageing and health to improve intrinsic capacity and functional ability across the life course in diverse contexts, involving multiple sectors (health, social, and others), and sharing evidence on what can be done to meet the distinct needs and goals of older populations

To support these approaches WHO coordinates a broad range of activities.

These include :

development of normative tools, including standardized survey instruments and related manuals;
supporting countries to improve their capacity to collect, analyse and use data on ageing and health; and
supporting multi-country ageing and health surveys to improve Healthy Ageing in light of social, gender and biologic determinants, roles of health and other social systems, and broader social and economic context

More information on Technical Advisory Group for Measurement, Monitoring and Evaluation of the United Nation’s Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030)