The global demographic trend towards population ageing has prompted considerable political and public dialogue around its social and economic implications.1 One outcome has been a proliferation, at all levels of government, of policy initiatives designed to promote and support an improved ageing experience. Although these policies go under a wide range of terminologies - active ageing, healthy ageing, productive ageing, positive ageing, successful ageing and ageing well2 - they promote a similar aim of maximizing the health, quality of life and ability of older citizens to contribute to society. We prefer the term 'ageing well' because it is more encompassing and less burdened by prescriptive implications than the others.

The growth in ageing-well policy parallels an increasing interest in the role of evidence in the process of developing policy. There is a general agreement among those who generate the evidence and its potential users within the policy domain that evidence-'informed' if not evidence-'based' policy is a highly desirable goal.3

There are two significant reasons for paying close attention to the role of evidence in ageing-well policy. First, the discourse driving these policies is still evolving and is strongly polarized around sociopolitically loaded 'promise or peril?' positions.4 On the 'peril' side are the political economists with their concerns about rising age dependency ratios and the potential care and support needs of growing numbers and percentages of older people. The 'promise' side reacts to what is seen as a 'problematizing' of older people by emphasizing their actual and potential value, capacity and contribution, and downplaying or ignoring the fiscal 'peril'. Ageing-well policy approaches with their positive and hopeful 'not a problem' and 'good for the individual, good for society' messages have strong face validity and considerable appeal. These qualities, combined with the sociopolitical sensitivities around portraying population ageing as a 'problem' can reduce the impetus for policy makers to question and rigorously test the potential and the efficacy of ageing well as a 'solution' to population ageing. Despite its intuitive appeal and wide acceptance, the capacity of ageing well to address the 'perils' or fulfil the 'promise' of population ageing remains poorly researched.

Secondly, the assembly of an intelligible range of evidence for ageing well is complicated by the huge range of potential intervention pathways. The factors determining quality of life in ageing encompass every aspect of life, health and well-being and crosscut the full range of possible social interventions. Finding some evidence to justify almost any given approach is likely to be relatively easy. However, finding quality evidence that is relevant and translatable to achieving specific ageing-well goals in particular local contexts is likely to be much more challenging for policy makers with limited research resources.

Recently we undertook a study, as part of wider research to design a tool to assist ageing-well policy makers in incorporating evidence into policy and practice, which examined a sample of publically available ageing-well policy documents. We sought to gain some insight into the information sources that policy developers are using, and how they are using them, in formulating ageing-well policy.

The exercise delivered mixed messages about the state of evidence-informed policy and practice in ageing well. On the one hand, the manner in which evidence is mobilized to justify and scope the need for policy action suggests a reasonable level of research literacy available to many of these policy teams. However, there was little in the documents to suggest that the current surge of interest and activity in the area of ageing well is making significant headway in building a coherent evidence base around effective approaches and models to support ageing well. The hard questions around how and to what extent ageing well will contribute to addressing the health, social and fiscal issues raised by population ageing are not being addressed.

In this edition of the International Journal of Evidence Based Healthcare there are a variety of articles that have the potential to contribute evidence to inform ageing-well policy. These range from: a review of the literature on sarcopenia in older people highlighting the need for screening and management pathways; a discussion paper looking at business models aimed at improving diagnosis and treatment rates for familial hypercholesterolaemia patients through primary care providers to improve long-term outcomes by decentralizing specialist care; reviews of the literature in relation to respite care for people with dementia and their carers, and in relation to vitamin D supplementation for prevention of mortality in older people; and a systematic review of the evidence on the effectiveness, usability and acceptability of health technology in falls detection and prevention among older adults. However, all the articles conclude that evidence to date in their respective fields is insufficient and inconclusive and that further research is necessary.

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