Unconventional Views of Frailty Guest Editorial A Life Course Approach to Healthy Aging, Frailty, and Capability

OVER the last 25 years, investment in aging researchhas been greater in the United States than the United Kingdom, particularly in population studies investigating healthy aging or frailty and their determinants, or cohort changes in health and functioning. It is still unclear, in the U.K. context, whether age-related declines in health and functioning of cohorts now in late middle age will differ from that of current older people, and whether socioeco-nomic and gender differences in aging and expectations of life at older ages are changing. In 2005, a House of Lords scientific report on aging (1) called for new research to address these questions with a focus on the underlying lifetime process of biological aging that could integrate the rather separate research on specific age-related diseases, and translate evidence into policy and practice. Investment in U.K. aging research is beginning to change