Healthy Aging

Book excerpt: This book weaves all of these factors together to engage in and promote medical, biomedical and psychosocial interventions, including lifestyle changes, for healthier aging outcomes. The text begins with an introduction to age-related changes that increase in disease and disability commonly associated with old age. Written by experts in healthy aging, the text approaches the principles of disease and disability prevention via specific health issues. Each chapter highlights the challenge of not just increasing life expectancy but also deceasing disease burden and disability in old age. The text then shifts into the whole-person implications for clinicians working with older patients, including the social and cultural considerations that are necessary for improved outcomes as Baby Boomers age and healthcare systems worldwide adjust. Healthy Aging is an important resource for those working with older patients, including geriatricians, family medicine physicians, nurses, gerontologists, students, public health administrators, and all other medical professionals.