International Longevity Centre Global Alliance

ILC-USA

Mission

The mission of the ILC-USA is to uncover the biological, behavioral, and contextual drivers of longer, healthier lives—and to translate that knowledge into policies, practices, and innovations that improve well-being across the second half of life. Our two current work programs look to understand global health trends in older adults by applying the WHO construct of intrinsic capacity; and seek to raise awareness of the issues confronting older adults displaced by conflict or natural disaster and stimulate international action.

Major Funding Sources

Atlantic Philanthropies
Pfizer
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
MacArthur Foundation
Robert N. Butler Endowment

Recent Major Activities / Programs

Addressing the needs and fostering the capabilities of displaced older adults – in conjunction with the Columbia Global Center Amman, Jordan, and supported by Columbia President’s Global Innovation Fund 2024-2025
Consortium for Longitudinal AnalySiS of Intrinsic Capacity (CLASSIC). Ongoing program examining patterns and trends in intrinsic capacity in England, China, USA, 14 European countries and Israel.
Priority Setting for Social Science Aging Research. A Delphi analysis of the input of global leaders in the field of aging. PI: Jurgen Maurer, University of Lausanne. Funder: Velux Stiftung
Healthy Ageing in Europe: Intrinsic Capacity Norms, Disparities and Digital Assessments. Analysis of data from 14 European countries and Israel to map distributions of intrinsic capacity end explore socioeconomic determinants. PI: Katja Hanewald, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia. Funder Velux Stiftung. (Proj. 2054)
Multi-morbidity 3-City Alzheimer’s Disease EHR Study (M3AD Study). A study linking large datasets of electronic health records in New York, Chicago and Miami to examine patterns and determinants of Alzheimer’s Disease. PI: Moise Desvariuex. Funder: National Institutes of Health

Recent Publications

Chen M, Hanewald K, Si Y, Gu Y, Beard JR. Intrinsic Capacity Across 15 Countries in the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe. JAMA Network Open. 2025 May 1;8(5):e259792. PubMed PMID: 40354051.
Balachandran A, Pei H, Shi Y, Beard JR, Caspi A, Cohen A, Domingue BW, Eckstein Indik C, Ferrucci L, Furuya A, Kothari M, Moffitt TE, Ryan C, Skirbekk V, Zhang Y, Belsky DW. Pace of Aging in older adults matters for healthspan and lifespan. Nature Aging. 2025 May 26. doi: 10.1038/s43587-025-00866-6. Online ahead of print.PMID: 40419803
Alan A. Cohen, John R Beard, Luigi Ferrucci, Tamàs Fülöp, Vadim Gladyshev, Mahdi Moqri, Marcel G. M. Olde Rikkert, and Martin Picard. Balancing the promise and risks of geroscience. ) Nature Aging 2025, 5, pages 4–8
John R Beard, Katja Hanewald, Yafei Si, Jotheeswaran Amuthavalli Thiyagarajan, Dario Moreno-Agostino. Is 70 the new 60? A longitudinal analysis of cohort trends in intrinsic capacity in England and China. Nature Aging 2025, 5, 87–98
Chen C, Lim J, Koh J, Beard JR, Rowe J. Global and sex differences in adaptation to societal aging, a cross sectional comparison of 143 countries. Nature Aging 2025, 5, pages 113–121
Wieczorek M, Kliegel M, Beard JR, Guillemin F, Avendano M, Maurer J. Can ChatGPT provide useful guidance to assess the current state of and future priorities for aging research in the social sciences? Journal of Aging & Social Policy 2024, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/08959420.2024.2422669
Beyene MB, Visvanathan R, Ahmed M, Benyamin B, Beard JR, Amare AT Development and Validation of an Intrinsic Capacity Score in the UK Biobank Study Maturitas 2024, 185, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2024.107976
de Souto Barreto P, Gonzalez-Bautista E, Bischoff-Ferrari HA, Pelegrim de Oliveira V, Bandeira de Mello RG, Berbon C, Tavassoli N, Beard JR, Rolland Y, Martín MES, Vellas B. Real-life intrinsic capacity screening data from the ICOPE Care program Nature Aging 2024 https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-024-00684-2
Rundle AG, Crowe RP, Wang HE, Beard JR, Lo AX. A National Study on the Comparative Burden of Pedestrian Injuries from Falls Relative to Pedestrian Injuries from Motor Vehicle Collisions. Journal of Urban 2024 101 (1), 181-192
Giudici K, de Souto Barreto P, Guyonnet S, Beard JR, Takeda C, Cantet C, Andrieu S Vellas B. Predictive capacity of the Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) screening tool for intrinsic capacity impairments: results from the INSPIRE-T cohort. Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. 2024, 79 (7) glae112 https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glae112
Beard JR. Beyond Integrated Care, Nature Aging 1-4.
Philipe de Souto Barreto, Yves Rolland, Luigi Ferrucci, Hidenori Arai, Heike Bischoff-Ferrari, Gustavo Duque, Roger A Fielding, John R Beard, John Muscedere, Felipe Sierra, Bruno Vellas, Nathan K LeBrasseur. Looking at frailty and intrinsic capacity through a geroscience lens: the ICFSR & Geroscience Task Force. Nature Aging 2023, 3 (12) 1474-1479
Fried LP, Henry M, Beard JR, Rowe JW. Public Health 4.0: Creating health for longer lives. Public Policy & Aging Report. 2023, 33 (3) 86-91.
E Gonzalez-Bautista, John R Beard. The Challenge of Measuring Intrinsic Capacity. The Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging 27 (10) 806-807
Ramírez-Vélez R , Iriarte-Fernandez M, Santafé G, Malanda A, Beard JR, Garcia-Hermoso A, Izquierdo M. Association of intrinsic capacity with respiratory disease mortality. Respiratory Medicine 212, 107243
Ramírez-Vélez R, Maria Iriarte-Fernández M, Santafé G, Malanda A, Beard JR, Garcia-Hermoso A, Izquierdo Association of Intrinsic Capacity With Incidence and Mortality of Cardiovascular Disease: Prospective Study in UK Biobank. Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle. 2023. 14 (5) 2054-2063
Beard JR, Chen M. Intrinsic Capacity as a Composite Outcome Measure: Opportunities and Challenges. Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging, 2023, 2023;27(6):398-400. DOI: 1007/s12603-023-1923-z
Yafei Si, Katja Hanewald, Shu Chen, Bingqin Li, Hazel Bateman, & John R. Beard. (2023). Life-course inequalities in intrinsic capacity and healthy ageing: retrospective evidence from pre-old and older populations in China. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 2023, 101 (‎5)‎, 307 – 316C.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7588511

Recent Media

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2489666-a-new-measure-of-health-is-revolutionising-how-we-think-about-ageing/
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/70-is-the-new-60-as-older-people-enjoy-better-health-than-ever-sgz3f7c5s
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/19/why-70-is-the-new-60-for-many-baby-boomers/

Partnerships

Partners

Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia https://www.cepar.edu.au/
IHU HealthAge, Toulouse, France. https://ihuhealthage.fr/en/
American Hospital in Paris. https://www.american-hospital.org/en
Friede Springer Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Centre, Berlin. https://fs-cpc.de/en/unsere-mission/#:~:text=The%20Friede%20Springer%20Cardiovascular%20Prevention,cause%20of%20death%20in%20Germany.
World Economic Forum – Longevity Economy Initiative. The Longevity Economy Initiative is redesigning retirement systems, advancing financial innovations, and fostering longevity literacy to ensure better financial and health outcomes for individuals and societies. https://initiatives.weforum.org/financial-resilience-for-every-generation/home
Global Coalition on Aging
National University of Singapore- The Healthdistrict@queenstown initiative. A major multi-stakeholder project in Singapore spearheaded by the National University of Singapore (NUS), National University Health System (NUHS), and Housing & Development Board (HDB) to reimagine an entire district in a way that fosters healthy and active ageing. https://healthdistrictqueenstown.sg/

Key Staff

Dr John Beard, MBBS, PhD
Director of the International Longevity Center USA at CUM and Irene Diamond Professor of Productive Aging (in Health Policy Management, Epidemiology and in the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center)

Contact information

Columbia Aging Center
ILC- USA
Mailcode: MSPH 25
722 West 168th Street
New York, NY 10032

Website – https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/research/centers/robert-n-butler-columbia-aging-center/research/international-longevity-center

Twitter page – @drjohnbeard

Twitter page

Facebook page

Documents:

ILC USA BIENNIAL UPDATE 2015-2017 (PDF)

ILC-USA Activity Report 2015 (PDF)

ILC-USA Activity 2013 (PDF)

ILC-USA Activity Report 2010-2011 (PDF)

ILC-USA Activity Report 2009-2010 (PDF)