The world is ageing – by 2050 one in six people will be aged 65 and over. Helping everyone remain in good health is key to improving longevity and achieving longer, healthier lives.

We know physical activity can keep people healthier for longer and make an early death less likely. Preventative healthcare can also support longer lives by reducing the burden of disease at the population level. Investing in people’s health is vital for everyone’s wellbeing, and can also ensure that we can all truly benefit from the ‘longevity dividend’ associated with an ageing population.

Yet around the globe, action on, and investment in, healthy ageing and preventative health is still not being prioritised at the policy level. The ILC Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index has already explored how 153 countries perform against six healthy ageing metrics, holding governments to account by tracking their progress on prevention and healthy ageing.

With Paris hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics, there is an opportunity to engage with global policymakers on healthy ageing and the importance of physical activity and preventative health measures. Through our Going for gold project, we have reframed the idea of healthy ageing, using the Olympics as a conduit to ask:

If healthy ageing and prevention were Olympic sports, who would win?

To answer this, we have produced a “Healthy Ageing Medal Table” that ranks countries and territories on eight different healthy ageing disciplines – described as if they were ‘sporting’ categories:

1. Jab-elin: how well nations perform on coverage across five childhood immunisation programmes.
2. Archery: how well nations perform on meeting WHO immunisation targets for measles and influenza (flu).
   
3. Prevention Triathlon: how nations score on the prevalence of three lifestyle circumstances related to prevention (diet, diabetes and tobacco use).
4. Sport climbing: how far how countries have ‘climbed’ the Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index.
5. Race walking: how well nations perform when it comes to physical activity.
6. Marathon: how well nations perform on healthy life expectancy.
7. 100m sprint: nations with the most centenarians as a percentage of their population.
8. Relay race: how economic and political blocs perform on the Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index.

Our final report examines the data from the Table. We find that:

• Despite their ageing populations, Japan and South Korea are clear outliers when it comes to healthy ageing, with two medals each and several top 10 finishes.
• Smaller nations such as Niue also win two medals despite having a population of just 1,600 people. Monaco also wins gold with a population of around 40,000.
• African countries dominate the medal table thanks to their higher levels of physical activity, improvements made on the Index, and lower prevalence of tobacco use and diabetes. Botswana wins gold for climbing 24 places on the Index since 2019.
• European countries perform better on healthy ageing metrics such as immunisation, with Denmark, Hungary and the UK each winning medals for achieving high vaccination coverage.

To celebrate these achievements, we awarded medals to delegates from the best-preforming countries and territories at an awards ceremony in Paris.

This project has been financially supported by Sanofi. To read the full report and to find out how your country performs, download the materials below.