It’s time for a healthy aging strategy for Canada’s Veterans

Canada’s Veterans are an aging population, and many Veterans in this cohort are positioned to age with increasingly complex health and social needs. These changing circumstances have created a need to determine whether existing systems and services can support this generation of Veterans. In this article, the authors envision a healthy aging strategy for Canada’s Veterans to support their overall health and well-being and enable aging in the right place. Healthy aging presents an opportunity to shift the emphasis in Veteran care to one that is more proactive and preventive and holistically focuses on lifelong health and well-being. To achieve this, the authors begin by detailing why it is urgent to reconceptualize Veterans’ care and what the concept of healthy aging offers. Last, they discuss how other countries have supported the healthy aging of their Veterans and collaborative practices to support this effort. Lay Summary Canada’s Veterans are an aging population, and many in this group are positioned to age with complex health conditions and changing social circumstances. The evolving demographics raise the question of whether current services and systems can support this generation of Veterans to age in their homes and communities. With this context in mind, this article describes the need for a healthy aging strategy for Canada’s Veterans. It explains how the concept of healthy aging highlights the best ways to promote lifelong health and well-being for Canadian Veterans and examine examples of how other countries have applied this idea. The article concludes by discussing collaborative approaches to support the development of a healthy aging strategy for Canada’s aging Veterans.