Frailty in Old Age, a Public Health Concern at EU Level

Frailty in old age, a public health concern at EU level

18th April2013, Brussels

Scope and purpose

The main objective of the Conferenceis to agree on the key challenges on frailty, physical and cognitive decline and malnutrition for older people, to identify common approaches, and to help formulate strategies that address the complex nature of frailty.

The outcomesof the Frailty Conference will contribute to the drafting of guidelines on frailty in the EU health policy agenda as part of the EIP's implementation.

Content

The Conference is not meant to providea comprehensive review of frailty. Indeed, only specificdimensions of frailty will be addressed by keynote speakers: risk conditions for frailty, including malnutrition; cognitive and functional decline; interventions to overcome frailty; screening; etc.
In the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) context, the Frailty and Functional Decline (A3) Action Group is dealing with the above mentioned dimensions. In order to contribute to ageing and functional decline various aspects and best practices specific deliverables will be provided in two years' time.

Programme

Key note speakers will set the policy scene, followed by a plenary session to address specific topics. A set of four parallel workshopswill then allow participants to engage themselves in a more in-depth discussion on specific dimensions. Moreover, those parallel sessions willallow A3 members to harmonise their commitments on this specific topics:

Frailty, risk conditions, diagnosis, prevention
Malnutrition
Consequences of frailty; functional and cognitive decline
The impact of frailty in health and social services

Participants

The conference will bring together a range of key experts and policy makers from Member States, stakeholders already engaged in the EIP on AHA and various actors involved in the promotion of healthy ageing with a specific interest in frailty.

Please note that participation to the Conference is by invitation only.Nonetheless, if you are working on that field and you believe you can contribute to the achievement of the Conferences' aims please, contact Anna Carta at

Background

Faced with the challenge of an ageing population, the European Commission is responding with an ambitious initiative: the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA). The EIP on AHA has put innovation firmly on the agenda to help address demographic ageing.

The Strategic Implementation Plan for the EIP on AHA identified the "Action for prevention of functional decline and frailty" as one of the concrete actions proposed under the prevention, screening and early diagnosis pillar.

An Action Group on this topicwas created in June 2012 and is now implementing a common Action Plan. It involves stakeholders working across the health, care and other sectors (i.e. communication, housing, transport) representing the entire innovation value chain – from researchers, businesses, policy makers and regulators, public and private organisations to end users.

The recent Commission Communication on long-term care, initiatives such as the EU reflection process on chronic diseases and the foreseen EC communication on chronic diseases provide the more general background to the discussions in this conference.

Many international organizations (OCDE,UN Economic Commission for Europe, WHO) have started to address the various aspects of policy analysis on ageing and functional decline.This Conference will also contribute to the discussion.

Frailty in old age Conference, 18 April 2013