Age Friendly Futures is moving to Ageing Reframed, a new initiative focused on innovation in ageing and aged care. It will include a weekly newsletter (as you know it), plus webinars and collaborations with researchers and sector partners.

👇 As this is a new newsletter, you'll need to subscribe again below. Just your email address, no other details are collected.

A Yale study looked at more than 11,000 older Americans and found that, over a stretch of up to twelve years, 45% improved on at least one measure — cognition or walking speed — with roughly a third gaining on each (Levy and Slade, Geriatrics, 2026). (Averaged together as one group, the same people showed the decline you'd expect. The improvers only appear once we stop averaging.)

The ones who improved were more likely to have started with positive beliefs about their own ageing.

Those beliefs are learned, and the paper makes a interesting point as to where some of the learning happens: the assumption that older people simply decline can quietly narrow what gets offered, i.e. “why start rehab if the decline is inevitable?”

I truly believe that many aged care providers in Australia know this ground better than the paper does, and in practice much of the sector already works against the decline story. But this is an important reminder, nevertheless.

If how we picture ageing helps shape how it goes, then the language we use — with residents or clients, with families, in our own paperwork — is itself part of the care we give.

Wednesday 23 September | 10.30–11.30am ACST | Online | Free

Join us for the first Ageing Reframed panel.

Our sector has embraced dignity and person-centred care. It has paid far less attention to identity — the person's sense of who they are — and the part it plays in how people make decisions and adopt behaviours. Whether someone seeks help, stays on a medication, or accepts support at all often turns on whether the step sits with who they take themselves to be.

The panel works through that across three live problems: ageing in place and the family carers who sustain it; delayed help-seeking and medication; and culturally safe everyday care under the new Aged Care Act. With geriatrician Dr Sanka Amadoru, and Behaviour ID's Mat Crompton and Kris White.

PS: Mat Crompton wrote in Behaviour ID's newsletter about trying, more than once, to talk his father into an e-bike. His dad is a lifelong cyclist, still fit and still sharp, and the answer was always no. Taking the bike would have meant accepting he was a different rider than the one he'd always been. Read this story here.

Tuesday 28 July | 2–4.30pm AEST | Online | Ticketed

I'm running this workshop with Ageing Australia, building on the June webinar on AI in aged care. The session covers Tier 2 and Tier 3 of AI adoption — the structured phase that comes after Tier 1, where generic tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot are already in everyday use across the sector.

Hands-on walkthroughs of five practical tools — AI Use Case Discovery, Value Assessment, Ethics Assessment, Risk Assessment, and a Prioritisation Roadmap. Governance and oversight considerations through the back half. For executives, operational managers and anyone moving their organisation past individual experimentation.

Wednesday 5 August | 9am–5pm AEST | Establishment Ballroom, Sydney | Ticketed

A one-day forum for NDIS and aged care providers on where AI and automation are landing in day-to-day operations — rostering, compliance, intake, payroll — and where they're still rough. Hosted by Tania Gomez Consulting, the program runs across VR for dementia, AI governance, short tech showcases from a range of vendors, and a CEO roundtable to close. I'm speaking on the future of care.

You can read more here. Registering through the link below takes 20% off. 👇

A USC-led study in The Lancet Healthy Longevity pooled data on more than 214,000 older adults across 14 countries and regions and found that the weight of each modifiable dementia risk factor shifts sharply by place. Low education sits behind far more risk in China than in the United States; high body weight far more in the US than in India. The same set of factors, in very different proportions. (read it here)

They also found the factors tend to cluster the same way everywhere, (e.g. smoking and drinking together, isolation and hearing and vision loss together) which is important to factor in when designing preventative interventions.

What's the secret to living until you're 100? Find out first-hand, as six women over 100-years-old share their best tips for living a long and healthy life, from long walks to Hennessy shots. Watch it here.

Going to museums, galleries and the theatre is associated with a biologically younger body. Researchers found that adults over 50 who regularly attended cultural events appeared biologically around three years younger than those who rarely did. The effect was similar in magnitude to being physically active. (And I was looking for an excuse to skip the gym!)

Each week, I review developments in ageing and aged care and what they mean in practice. If this was useful, forward it to someone in the sector who'd appreciate it.

George Gouzounis