When it all began on April 3rd, 2020, the International Federation on AgeingGlobal Cafe was intended as a way of bringing people together in the early days of a global pandemic to learn from speakers around the world, share ideas and stay connected through very uncertain times.
For over five years up until now this weekly Friday morning Virtual event has featured a wide range of professionals presenting on a diverse set of topics in the field of ageing and longevity.
For many attendees such as myself, this has been a much looked forward to weekly appointment for facilitated exchange of questions and insights with international perspectives. However, with the passage of time, like most routines, after a while things need a rethink; and so it has come that as of October 2025, the IFA Café has moved from a weekly to a monthly schedule with a new day – every 2nd Thursday at a new time (8AM EST in my case).
New leadership, new revamped team, new visions around the core strategy areas of the IFA. All this, in part perhaps, raised the question of capacity in terms of the team being able to keep up the momentum of producing a weekly schedule of speakers and sustaining a high level of conversation around relevant and emerging topic areas of interest to an international audience.
Considering that I’ve only missed maybe six sessions in five years, I must say it’s not a bad idea so as to avoid too much repetitiveness. The IFA Café in its first year covered all the health and social issues within the context of the global pandemic; and over the time since then, specific ageing and health matters, from vision and hearing, to the cognitive and physical have been covered in addition to topics related to technology, ageing in place and age friendly environments.
Last week in the second monthly IFA Café the discussion focused on Climate Change and its impact on ageing populations. Although this subject was covered once before in June 2024, this presentation was stronger and more thought provoking as shared by speakers Dr. Sridhar Venkatapuram and Dr. Gary Haq both working from the UK. For me, it was Venkatapuram – from King’s College London, Global HealthInstitute who gave the most food for thought.
Drawing attention immediately to healthy ageing as not being only about the absence of disease, but more broadly how poor environments around us deeply affect our health, Venkatapuram especially noted how this is most pronounced in low and middle income countries with socially vulnerable people. He also emphasised that in order to make the case for investments to improvement response to climate change an evidence based business case needs to be made.
Reminding us that there is no one blanket climate change policy or solution for the whole world, Venkatapuram passionately stated that these all should be locally based and include the voices of older people in the dialogue. A climate crisis event such as a flood have indirect impacts such as mobility, for instance a lack of access to carers where weather extremes isolate older people.
For much more, a recording of this Nov.13th IFA Café will be on the IFA website soon and in the meantime I will share three reports or papers that were shared during this climate change discussion, one of which came from a participant in the chat, which is always another great response area in these sessions to pick up for your learning purposes. Next date is Dec.11th.
