Many World Health Organization strategies, whether addressing diseases, conditions, people in different age groups or strengthening health systems, ask policymakers and practitioners to adopt a “life course” approach. But to do so, we need to agree on what this means, and how it can be put into practice in all regions of the world.

A life course approach addresses newborns, children, adolescents, adults, older people and the next generation. It contributes to longer, healthier lives by optimizing health trajectories across the life course, increasing people’s health capacities in each life stage, and enabling people’s well-being. 

This framework, across five sections, considers how to put a life course approach into practice.

Kathryn Kietzman, director of the Health Equity Program at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, contributed to this report.