In 2024, the Journal of Clinical Nursing invited nurses to support the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing by submitting work that demonstrates nursing's contribution to its four action areas. The response exceeded all expectations in terms of quality, diversity of topics presented and methodologies used. We were inundated with a broad range of manuscripts from across the globe giving this special issue a truly international flavour. Such a positive response leaves no doubt that the global nursing community has embraced the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030) agenda. The published manuscripts in this special issue provide evidence that reimagines what it means to grow older. This reimagination is transformative and moves ageing from being deficit focused to a world that values longevity, dignity, and wellbeing. This initiative is not merely a policy framework; it is a moral imperative to ensure that older people everywhere can live long, healthy, and meaningful lives. Nurses, as the largest and most trusted health workforce globally, are uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. This is because we, as a discipline, provide continuous, direct care across all health care settings, including hospitals, communities, rehabilitation and aged residential care. This is supported by the International Council of Nurses, who identify that nurses work across all settings, both independently and collaboratively to improve health and wellbeing through advocacy, evidence-informed decision-making, and culturally safe, therapeutic relationships (White et al. 2025). The very nature of our work requires us to spend significant and continuous amounts of time with consumers of health services. Consequently, nurses make impactful and ongoing contributions to the health and wellbeing of older people, no matter where they live. The contributions nurses make to supporting older people to live their best lives are underpinned by the principles of holism. Holism is the basis of nursing practice, providing the theoretical foundation that supports nurses to provide care that transcends physical health to include the social, spiritual, cultural and environmental needs of our communities. These principles are the foundation of nursing curricula, whether implied or explicitly named. They are also evident in many nursing texts, strategic plans and the preface to many health and social service policy-related documents. Healthy ageing is not just about the absence of disease. It is about enabling older adults to do what they value, to remain connected, to participate fully in society, all in environments and neighbourhoods that are familiar to them. This means listening to their voices, respecting their autonomy, and ensuring health and social service provision reflects where and how they want to live as they get older. Nurses must champion models of care that are relational, inclusive, equitable and grounded in the realities of ageing in diverse contexts. Unfortunately, nursing has not always operationalised the key conceptual notions of holism and healthy ageing (Neville et al. 2019). Numerous examples illustrate how nursing has been co-opted into reinforcing negative and ageist societal views of ageing and being an older person. These include adopting a deficit- and disease-focused approach, framing older adults as an economic and social burden, using ageist language, and treating older people as a homogenous group (Neville 2020). There is no doubt that older adults are high users of acute and long-term care services. Also, it is true that ageing, frailty and alterations to health and wellbeing are the reality for some older people. However, this discourse is only one of many that describe the realities of being older and should not be framed as the metanarrative or truth of all truths. Most older people live independently in their own homes, many still work, and live healthy lives. Society must also recognise and be grateful for the significant contributions older people make in paid and unpaid work such as volunteering and caregiving, which are essential for community functioning and social cohesion. On some level, nursing recognises and understands this; however, the value of unpaid work undertaken by older adults remains invisible and undervalued (Stewart et al. 2022). This highlights the importance of the United Nationals Decade of Healthy Ageing initiative which serves as a reminder of our obligations to older people. Nurses must champion this initiative and can do so in the following ways. Firstly, nurses must confront and change these deeply ingrained systemic prejudicial barriers that disadvantage older people and their ability to age well. As earlier stated, due to the size of the profession and our societal presence across a variety of health and social service sectors, we are well placed to be change agents. We must therefore leverage our privileged position and begin by challenging ageism and the stigmatisation of older people, role modelling best practice ways of affirming older people and their place in our communities. Secondly, across clinical, community, and policy settings, nurses must understand the importance of ensuring environments are age-friendly. In other words, our communities and neighbourhoods must be safe and appropriate places for older people to not only age in but to age well in. The availability of integrated health and social services, as well as the accessibility to quality aged care services, all within a person-centred framework, are integral to ensuring communities are supportive and inclusive to older people. Yet, the decade ahead demands more than incremental change; it requires visionary leadership, innovation, and a commitment to equity. Nursing should not undertake this alone. As editors, we would see this as paternalistic and promulgating an ageist narrative by thinking we can make decisions for and speak on behalf of older people. We must develop authentic and genuine relationships with older person groups and communities to reflect on not only our progress to date but to envision an affirmative and strengths-based path forward. We ask you to reaffirm your commitment to older people, not as passive recipients of care, but as active partners. Let us work together, across disciplines, communities and borders, to build a world where every older person can thrive. Finally, we would like to acknowledge and thank the reviewers, all of whom understood and supported the importance of promoting the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing to nurses via the Journal of Clinical. Consequently, nurses as well as other health and social service providers can feel confident that key recommendations identified in the articles will ultimately be meaningful to older communities. The decade is ours to shape. Let nursing lead the way. The authors have nothing to report. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
Neville et al. (Fri,) studied this question.