Aging populations: a tremendous societal challenge requiring academic research
The WHO estimates that in the year 2040, every third European will be over 65 years old. Aging-related disorders such as type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease are on the rise, even among children.
Thirty percent of boys and twenty percent of girls between the ages of 7 and 16 are overweight. Cardiorespiratory fitness of the young has decreased by as much as fifty percent in the last thirty years.
Individual quality of life is negatively affected by morbidity, but the growing number of multi-morbid people will collapse the carrying capacity of societies. This challenges even the national safety. Who in the future will undertake jobs requiring strength and endurance when young people’s physical fitness is deteriorating? Will Finland have rescue workers, border guards, paramedics, builders, or nurses in 2040?
Lifestyle guidance and increased exercise are important, but already too late for the next few decades. Alongside these, we need personalized medicine, health promoting and disease-mitigating precision treatments.
Advances in public health require active academic research
Molecular medicine has developed at a unprecedented pace in the last decades. Research produces valuable data masses the analyses of which are boosted by machine learning and artificial intelligence. This work requires the sharpest scientific minds, multidisciplinary expertise, and long-term resourcing. If mechanistic understanding of diseases can prevent or delay blindness as a diabetes complication or the onset of a brain disorder in working-age people, the impact and savings are immense.
Promoting the health of Finnish population requires strong academic research. However, the government’s research, development and innovation (RDI) investments are steered past the core funding of the universities, withering away discovery science. The faith of your talents in academic career paths is declining. The act on the secondary use of health and social data and the increasingly complicated authorisation processes for patient research have dramatically reduced clinical research.
“I have this inexplicable constant sense of longing for something. Maybe it is hope. I’m not waiting for a miracle, but I do wait for medical knowledge to progress, for small steps towards scientific advances”, wrote a relative of a patient.
Those small steps could be leaps. This requires rationalisation of permit regulation, a vision and strategy for health research and committed long-term RDI investments to attract the best international talents and companies to Finland. Then the door to a healthier future is ajar.
