The Strategy refreshes and replaces the Health of Older People Strategy 2002, and aligns with the new New Zealand Health Strategy 2016.

The Healthy Ageing Strategy vision is that “older people live well, age well, and have a respectful end of life in age-friendly communities”. It takes a life-course approach that seeks to maximise health and wellbeing for all older people.

The Strategy sets a framework whereby policies, funding, planning and service delivery:

• prioritise healthy ageing and resilience into and throughout people’s older years
• enable high quality acute and restorative care, for effective rehabilitation, recovery and restoration after acute events
• ensure people can live well with long-term conditions
• better support people with high and complex needs
• provide respectful end-of-life care that caters to physical, cultural and spiritual needs.

The Strategy is the result of an extensive engagement and consultation process.