John Beard is Irene Diamond Professor and Director of the International Longevity Center USA at Columbia University, New York. He was previously Director of Ageing and Life Course with the World Health Organization in Geneva where he led major global initiatives including the World report on ageing and health, the Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) program and the Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities which now covers over 350 million people. He has worked extensively with the World Economic Forum including as chair of their Global Agenda Council on Population Ageing, and was a commissioner with the recent US National Academy of Medicine Commission on Healthy Longevity. His research frames health from the perspective of functioning rather than disease, and he applies this approach to aging-related issues ranging from biological drivers through to the societal implications of population aging. He recently reported significant improvements in functioning in more recently born participants of a large English longitudinal study, and is currently extending this analysis to see if these improvements are also seen in other countries and across all socioeconomic tiers of the whole population.

