Is aging a problem?: Dependency, long-term care, and public policies in Chile

• Published in: Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública
• Main Author: Pablo Villalobos Dintrans
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Spanish; Portuguese
• Published: Pan American Health Organization 2018
• Subjects: Aging; long-term care; public policy; dependency (psychology); Chile; Medicine; R; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2018.168; https://doaj.org/article/631d13bcafb040319764b7bfbfac68df

Chile is facing changes associated with the demographic transition. So far, these challenges have been framed as age related. This has contributed to approaching a broad set of issues from a narrow perspective. The focus on aging has fragmented a multidisciplinary problem into different parts—particularly health and social policies—with different actors dealing with it from the perspective of their own sector. This process has generated an incomplete picture, preventing the definition and measurement of dependency and long-term care, and hindering a coordinated response to these issues. This article advocates for a change in the definition of the problem, by adopting the concept of long-term care, in order to gain a deeper and more comprehensive perspective on the issues arising from the situation that Chile is experiencing.