Professor Andrew J Scott joins NAM Commission
Professor Andrew J Scott has been asked to join United States’ National Academy of Medicine, where professor Scott will be a member of a new International Commission on Healthy Longevity. ‘The National Academy of Medicine’s Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity’ is an International Commission that includes stakeholders and representatives from key participating institutions worldwide. The Commission’s members will work together to carry out an assessment of the existing and projected risks, challenges, and opportunities presented by global ageing.
The Commission will recommend global priorities and actions to be addressed by 2030 to optimise the health, function, and well-being of all people into later life. The Commission will be geographically and demographically diverse and will consist of 17 eminent individuals from both the public and private sectors with expertise in gerontology and geriatrics, demography, the social determinants of health, behavioural health, built environments, business and workforce, economics, health care delivery and financing, biomedical science and technology, and health and finance policy, among others.
Professor Scott is a world-leading authority on the critical issues related to health, career and financial development concerning longevity. He is co-founder of The Longevity Forum, a member of the WEF council on Healthy Ageing and Longevity and a consulting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Longevity. Andrew is also the recipient of an ESRC grant for researching the economic longevity dividend. Professor Scott was recently asked by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (Ageing) to prepare a background paper for the UN EGM, ‘Building Forward Better for Older Persons post COVID-19’. In the paper, ‘Older Persons and the Post-Covid-19 Agenda’, Professor Scott observed that the Covid-19 pandemic has been a “multidimensional shock affecting the lives of billions of people. It has exerted a disproportionate impact on the health, lives, rights, and welfare of older people.”
Globally, life expectancy has increased by more than six years between 2000 and 2019 – from 66.8 years in 2000 to 73.4 years in 2019 (WHO). Longevity is clearly a leading key issues facing the global community, and with previously unimaginable advances in the fields of science and technology, life expectancy continues to increase. It is these significant and far-reaching consequences that occupy the research and written endeavours of professor Scott, who argues that longer lives and technology are bringing about deep-seated changes in how we live and work.
With the advantage of more time, professor Scott reasons, the question of how one can make the best use of an extended lifespan will continue to be one of the foremost issues of our time. He continues his exploration of longevity with his colleague and co-author, professor Lynda Gratton, in the best-selling books, The 100-Year Life and The New Long Life.
