The Best of IFA Virtual Global Café 2024: Relevance in a 5th Year.

In this 5^th year of Friday mornings of the VirtualIFA Global Café, as usual speakers from around the world presented on a wide range of topics related to ageing and longevity. For many attendees such as myself, this is a weekly appointment for facilitated exchange of questions and insights with international perspectives. About twenty or so of us have shown our faces faithfully, weekly since the outset, though I confess I missed four episodes this year, for something called vacation.

From its start, April 3^rd, 2020, it was intended as a way of bringing people together in the early days of a global pandemic. For that whole year, speakers were interviewed by the then IFA Secretary General, Dr. Jane Barratt on various issues tied to the impact of COVID-19 on older people – The Urgency in Low and Middle Income Countries with Dr. Alexandre Kalache for instance. This bonded everyone on these Fridays as we tried to make sense of this challenge.

We have moved on since then of course and so too the format of the IFA Global Café has slightly changed, however the core of audience participation has not; and though the conversations have largely drifted from the context of the pandemic, the topics have pretty much maintained relevance as to their focus on the issues related to the experiences of older people. As we have moved on since 2021, the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing became the backdrop.

As I did last year with my year-end highlights, let’s start by featuring the top two speakers who received the most participants in the Global Café audience, however this by no means diminishes the importance of others and their subject matter. At times for some, the topics are of very specific interest, in niche areas, and as such don’t necessarily pull a larger audience, but at times it is simply the case that people are not available in whatever time zones they are in.

Up first, on August 9^th with the topic “Developing Age-Friendly Communities” was Emer Coveney National Programme Manage from Age-Friendly Ireland. It seems the Age-Friendly movement continues to be a draw. Perhaps it a testimony to the renowned Irish culture and the sense of community they demonstrate, and also a result of the tight geography of the country, that the Age-Friendly system and integral programmes are so well articulated and executed.

Second most attended, on November 15 was Dr. David Conn, Psychiatrist, Baycrest Centre in Toronto with the topic “Social Isolation & Loneliness Among Older People”. If there has been one subject of concern, top on the list, across all ages over the last five years it has been this one. Conn quickly drew a distinction between social isolation (objective) and loneliness (subjective), noting that you can be socially connected relatively well, but still be lonely. One of the shared resources at this session was a 2024 project that Dr. Conn had a lead in, titled Canadian Clinical Guidelines on Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults which is well worth reading.

Rounding off the notable well-attended list for 2024,  were discussions with Dr. Prakash Tyagi on Climate Change and its Impact on the Ageing Population (May 24) where he made a link to intergenerational solidarity as one key solution on this issue – and Leveraging digital technology to improve the social inclusion of older adults with Lars Kayser and Ms. Emilie Kauffeldt Wegener.

Postscript. If I had one wish for enhancing the IFA Global Café experience in 2025 it would be to allow maybe once every quarter, for smaller well-facilitated breakout groups of four or five people where we could share our thoughts on one question, on one topic for 10-12 minutes. Not only would we get to know better the now familiar faces on the gallery screen who live in other parts of the world, but we might get more robust questions tossed back at the speakers.