Global Agenda Councils: The Challenges of Gerontology

My brain is hon­oured to have been invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate-togeth­er with the rest of my body of course- in a new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum. Of course I have accept­ed, giv­en that the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils have this fas­ci­nat­ing charter:

- “Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils will chal­lenge pre­vail­ing assump­tions, mon­i­tor trends, map inter­re­la­tion­ships and address knowl­edge gaps. Equal­ly impor­tant, Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils will also pro­pose solu­tions, devise strate­gies and eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of actions using mea­sur­able benchmarks.”

- “In a glob­al envi­ron­ment marked by short-term ori­en­ta­tion and silo-think­ing, Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils will fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and long-range think­ing to address the pre­vail­ing chal­lenges on the glob­al agenda.”

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Update (Novem­ber 2nd, 2008): my pro­pos­al is to cre­ate a Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion. I will keep you informed via this blog.

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The Inau­gur­al Sum­mit on the Glob­al Agen­da in Dubai (Novem­ber 7–9) sounds very promising:

- “Dur­ing the three-day Sum­mit, the 700 par­tic­i­pants of this inter­dis­ci­pli­nary event will engage in inter­ac­tive work­shops and ses­sions to set pri­or­i­ties for the most com­pelling ideas for improv­ing the state of the world, from ground­break­ing areas of research to new and excit­ing devel­op­ments and cross-cut­ting solu­tions to address the world’s chal­lenges. The out­comes of the Sum­mit will be pre­sent­ed at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum Annu­al Meet­ing 2009 in Davos for fur­ther dis­cus­sion and action.”

Will keep you post­ed on what hap­pens before, dur­ing and after the event (mem­ber­ship involves a set of activ­i­ties dur­ing full year) to encour­age a wider par­tic­i­pa­tion. This can be an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to build bridges between grow­ing cog­ni­tive research and appli­ca­tions and the chal­lenges of geron­tol­ogy, health, edu­ca­tion. And, the high­er the par­tic­i­pa­tion, the more rel­e­vant and sol­id those bridges will be.