Resilience And Successful Aging

R esilience as one of the pillars of successful aging has received increasing attention from the scientific community in recent years and has become even more important post-Covid-19 pandemic where countries worldwide are trying to build individual, community and system resilience ( 1 , 2 ). Successful aging was first introduced by Rowe and Kahn emphasizing on illness avoidance, high physical and mental functioning, and active life engagement ( 3 ); and subsequently expanded to include multidimensional factors such as social functioning, psychological factors and resilience ( 4 ). The fastest growing segment worldwide is above 80 years old where the numbers are expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to 426 million ( 5 ). Age is a risk factor for chronic disease, cancer, frailty, dementia and associated with declining resilience ( 6 ). With advances in public health and medical treatment, there is widening gap between lifespan and healthspan. Health systems across the world are challenged to find effective means of reducing prevalence of disability and promote solutions to successful aging. Most of the scientific literature in the past decade has been on prevention of chronic disease, frailty, and dementia.