By Melissa King, Bernard Siegel, and Eve Herold – published on December 14, 2023 – Rejuvenation Research – Vol. 26 Issue 6 –
The Healthspan Action Coalition (https://healthspanaction.org) on advancing healthspan as a cross-sector, societal movement to redirect medical science and health care to a new paradigm. We are a global nonprofit organization with the overarching mission of extending not just the lifespan but also the healthspan—the period of life lived free of disease and disability—of all people across the globe.
There is strength in numbers. Over 100 respected organizations that have already joined our mission. Other stakeholders are asked to help us move the needle in advancing the transformative benefits of emerging and meritorious science.
The world’s populations are now experiencing a perfect storm of demographic change, where older people, who are often in poor health, are taking up a larger and larger share of the population, while birth rates decline in nearly every economically developed nation. This trend is only expected to increase in the coming decades, putting stress on health care systems, social safety nets, and economies across the world.
Age-related diseases and, in fact, a vast array of noncommunicable diseases (all of which entail rapid premature aging) are creating a nearly inestimable burden on all of society, but this isn’t cast in stone. There’s hope on the scientific horizon of addressing the aging process itself, which is the underlying condition related to virtually every noncontagious disease, including heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, liver, and kidney disease, and a vast array of conditions that can strike at any time in life.
Great strides are being made to address this problem in the field of longevity science thanks to Artificial Intelligence, converging technologies, tissue engineering, cell and gene therapies, and other techniques. Longevity science, sometimes considered a less-than-respectable endeavor, is now mainstream. We’ve learned that one’s biological age can be manipulated, and reversing the aging process is possible, as has been demonstrated in animals. In fact, the World Health Organization’s 2022 International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) recognized that aging is the causative factor in most diseases but is amenable to treatment.
Extending the healthspan by manipulating the aging process is imperative if we are to solve the grave problems brought on by the burden of diseases and disabilities due to aging populations, chronic diseases, and declining birth rates. If the aging process can be slowed and even reversed, the basis of most chronic diseases will be ameliorated. People who otherwise would have spent decades of their lives in a diminished, unhealthy, and less-abled state could enjoy greater health and vitality until the very end of life. All of society would benefit from their contributions. In fact, in 2020 British economist Andrew Scott and others estimated that extending the healthspan by just 1 year would contribute $38 trillion per year to the U.S. economy alone.
Like any new scientific or medical breakthrough, the new findings in longevity science need to percolate among many sectors of society to reach the patients who need them. The task of turning possibilities into actualities—getting new science from the research bench to the bedside—is inevitably a whole-society undertaking. There are multiple stakeholders and a need for coordination among disparate groups and entities who together have the potential to move the ball forward. This is where the Healthspan Action Coalition steps in. The organization asserts that healthcare is a universal human right.
Our mission includes
- Redefining the goal of medicine toward extension of the human healthspan based upon successful antiaging therapies.
- Increasing government funding for healthspan research and the funding and filling of clinical trials.
- Promoting the economic longevity dividend by extending the human healthspan.
- Advancing public and private sector payment policies supporting patient access to regenerative medicine and other advanced therapies aimed at extending the healthspan.
- Addressing the progress, implications, and global adoption of World Health Organization ICD-11 codes declaring aging a disease-related treatable medical condition.
- Promoting an adequate workforce to deliver healthspan-extending therapies.
- Lessening preclinical animal testing and substituting, where possible, support for the deployment of advanced technologies, including precision medicine, organ-on-a-chip, AI, organoids, and tissue engineering.
- Distributive justice—ensuring that the healthspan-extending therapies are available to all populations and communities by creating cross-sector collaborations and tools aimed at addressing disparities in the drivers of health.
Individual initiatives will entail educating and creating collaborations among scientists, physicians, government agencies, health care systems, policymakers, publishers, private industry, professional associations, patient advocacy groups, and the general public.
In the past year, the coalition, in collaboration with the Regenerative Medicine Foundation, launched its initiative through an international summit held in partnership with Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, published works profiling cutting-edge advances in longevity science and organized our first on-the-ground rally celebrating International Longevity Day in San Francisco, CA.
But the HSAC’s work has just begun. It seeks all shareholders to add their voices and help us create the momentum needed to reorient all of medicine to the new paradigm of healthy, vital, disability-free life to every man, woman, and child on the planet. If you’d like more information about the Healthspan Action Coalition or would like to join our vital mission, please contact Bernard Siegel, Executive Director.
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Address correspondence to:
Bernard Siegel Co-Founder and Executive Director
Healthspan Action Coalition
9314 Forest Hill Boulevard, #2
Wellington, FL 33411 USA
E-mail: bemard@healthspanaction.org
