An Ecological Approach to Healthy Aging Across the Lifespan

How and where we live, eat, work, play, and socialize profoundly influence our physical and mental health. Beginning in the womb and continuing throughout life, environmental factors are strong determinants of health decades later. Reproductive, children's, midlife and elder health are inherently interconnected. In addition, both positive and negative features of our biological, social and natural environments, alone and in combination, can affect health at any time in the life continuum. These stressors can also accumulate and influence genetic expression, and even the health of future generations. A century of change in our food, built, chemical, natural, psychosocial, and socioeconomic environments is fueling dramatic increases in diseases and disabilities throughout the lifespan, such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, reproductive health and developmental disabilities. Combined with a near doubling of the over-65 population in the new few decades, this trajectory threatens to overwhelm our health care system, our social resources, and bring economic and social instability. We can advance a more positive path if we understand and address the interrelationships of health and the environment throughout life, and explore common sense and also innovative approaches that may prevent chronic disease, foster health, and sustain local and global economies. Furthermore, interventions that address the structural, systemic origins of many diseases can be designed to benefit ecosystems more generally, thereby linking human health to planetary health.