¶ WikiAge-It
Age-It: A novel public-private alliance to generate socioeconomic, biomedical and technological solutions for an inclusive Italian ageing society
This wiki-page has been created for providing a full account of the Age-It Programme to the general public, including research and educational institutions, care providers and civil society associations, businesses and industries.
Age-It is a significant structural investment program aimed at strengthening the network of Italian research centers currently operating in the field of aging. It is the only one among the 14 Extended Partnerships funded nationally by the National Resilience and Recovery Fund that is specifically dedicated to the topic of aging and its consequences on Italian society.
The Research Programme indeed aims at generating a quantum leap, making Italy the leading scientific hub in research on ageing, and a state-of-the-art “empirical laboratory” regarding the ageing process to build an inclusive society for all ages.
THE TEN SPOKES OF AGE-IT. Age-It identifies the ten most relevant challenges to allow individuals to age well and to build an inclusive ageing society as the foundation of the Spoke infrastructure, which consists of six thematic (horizontal) challenges and four cross-integration (vertical) challenges.
- The project originates from the demographic megatrends that are shaping our society: the first challenge is thus the understanding of the micro and macro demographic drivers of ageing adopting a Data Science approach to decision-making (Spoke1).
- Addressing and facing population ageing necessitates a focus on pivotal thematic challenges: improving our understanding of the biology of ageing (Spoke2), of the clinical and functional factors related to multimorbidity (Spoke3), of the life course trajectories of active and healthy ageing (Spoke4), and of the world of care provision (Spoke5). These challenges are intertwined with the Silver Economy (i.e., work, participation and welfare at older ages, but also new consumption and activity models) (Spoke6) and with the political and cultural dimensions of an ageing society (Spoke7).
- The thematic challenges are systematically integrated by three additional cross-integration challenges: The importance of interventions and technologies to reduce the burden of age-related diseases, disorders and disabilities (Spoke8), the technological developments towards meeting the (new) needs of older people (Spoke9), as well as the overall mainstreaming and re-thinking of ageing-related policy-making (Spoke10).