on the North Coast
in NSW
in Australia
within 10 years
Older Australians are living longer, and this means a new stage of life is emerging between the end of the conventional working age and the onset of old age. These older Australians are remaining productive for longer, working for longer, and continuing to contribute to Australian society. They often lead vibrant, active lives.1 While many North Coast residents are in this life stage, they are gradually moving into old age.
More than 20% of the North Coast population are aged over 65 compared to 18.5% for NSW and 15.7% for Australia. Given this over-representation, and the high proportion with chronic conditions, Healthy Living and Ageing was chosen for the second regional strategy of the North Coast Collective. It is expected those over 65 will easily reach 30% of our population in 10 years.
We cannot continue to work in the same way. Health professionals need to partner with older people and their families to manage health and chronic illness. Non-disease-focused approaches are needed to support older people to age well.
Healthy North Coast has supported the North Coast Collective by leading a needs assessment of the aged population and conducting a literature review. Both of these have shown an explicit need to develop a regional Healthy Living and Ageing Strategy.
Our healthy ageing agenda
The North Coast Collective is committed to a positive healthy ageing agenda on the North Coast to:
- enrich the community by influencing healthy living and ageing across the life course
- optimise funding investment to ensure older persons' services are evidence based and oriented towards improved health and wellbeing outcomes
- integrate health, ageing and social services to deliver comprehensive, coordinated and culturally safe services for older people
- acknowledge and address ageist attitudes that prevent equitable health, policy and outcomes for older people.
Strategy development
The strategy will provide a blueprint for future investment into health, aged care and social services using systems dynamic modelling (SDM) and input from the community. Strategy development will be undertaken during 2021-22 and include:
- consumer research on intergenerational community perceptions of ageing
- the establishment of shared governance
- shared investment and co-production workshops to agree on the aims, objectives and priorities for the strategy
- SDM to test the effectiveness of evidence-based interventions and models.
SDM workshops will be held from June to October 2021 with consumers, carers, clinicians, councils, transport planners, Department of Communities and Justice, and Department of Education.
