Healthspan, One Health, democratic longevity, prevention, education and connection: the key points that emerged from the Milan Longevity Summit 2026.
Last week I attended the Milan Longevity Summit 2026, titled Bold ideas, big systems, One Health: four days full of presentations, talks, discussion panels, as well as direct exchanges with professionals and participants from very different fields. The 2026 edition was presented as a journey dedicated to longevity through the One Health perspective, connecting human health, the environment, the economy, innovation, and society.
In this article, I share the seven key points I took from it. I will not go into the more strictly medical-scientific aspects, the latest research, products, or the most advanced longevity pathways. What I can say is that the sector is booming and the range of solutions continues to grow, perhaps even too rapidly, also driven by technology and AI, and that the two common directions seem to be personalisation and predictive prevention.
- From lifespan to healthspan: not only how many years we live, but how we live them
- Redesigning systems: a paradigm shift
- One Health: human health is part of a wider system
- Democratic longevity: living better cannot be a privilege
- Navigating the prevention market: the power of choice
- Health education is an infrastructure for healthy longevity
- Connection, belonging and sense of purpose: health needs relationships and meaning
1. From lifespan to healthspan: not only how many years we live, but how we live them
The goal of longevity is not simply to live longer, but to understand for how many years we can live in good health, with enough autonomy, energy and mental clarity to participate in life. This is the difference between lifespan, the length of life, and healthspan, the years lived in good health.
This distinction changes the way we look at prevention. It is not enough to reduce the risk of disease or prolong survival; what matters most is maintaining over time those functional capacities that allow a person to move, decide, relate to others and express their own nature. In practice, this means living with dignity. The World Health Organization defines healthy ageing as the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age: not only the absence of disease, but the concrete possibility of doing what has value for the person.
Longevity, therefore, is not only a biological or chronological fact, but a quality of presence in one’s daily life.
2. Redesigning systems: a paradigm shift
The increase in longevity is often described as a critical issue: too many older people, too many costs, too much pressure on health and social systems. The real point, however, is to understand whether our health, social, economic and cultural systems are designed to support longer and healthier lives.
Dominant health and social models are built according to a reactive logic: action is taken when disease has already appeared, often in a fragmented way, centred on the hospital and poorly integrated with people’s real lives. A longer-lived society instead requires a paradigm shift: prevention, community, support for functionality, integration between health and social services, attention to living contexts and not only to clinical episodes.
This also applies to metrics. If we continue to measure only performance or economic production, we risk losing sight of what matters in people’s concrete lives: autonomy, quality of life, equity, relationships, access to healthy food, decent housing, a supportive environment, the possibility to move and participate. It is no coincidence that the OECD has been working for years on frameworks to measure wellbeing beyond GDP, precisely because GDP does not tell us whether people’s lives are improving and under what conditions.
Longevity, therefore, does not only require more medicine, but also preventive, inclusive systems capable of supporting health throughout the entire life course.
3. One Health: human health is part of a wider system
Human health cannot be separated from the environment in which we live. Air, water, soil, climate, biodiversity, animals, food systems, cities, transport, the economy, culture and social conditions directly or indirectly influence the possibility of living well and for a long time. This is the One Health approach, which the World Health Organization defines as an integrated and unifying approach aimed at sustainably balancing and optimising the health of people, animals and ecosystems.
Personal choices matter a great deal in the possibility of building healthy longevity, but these choices take place within contexts and environments that can either support them or make them difficult. The One Health perspective greatly broadens the discussion on longevity because living longer and better is not only the result of medicine, technology and individual willpower; it is also the effect of living, social and environmental systems capable of supporting health over time. Healthy longevity is not only a personal issue, but also a cultural, political, ecological, and economic one.
4. Democratic longevity: living better cannot be a privilege
One major risk of the new culture of longevity is that it becomes a privilege for the few. Genetic tests, predictive diagnostics, personalised nutrition, wearables, prevention programmes, specialist consultations, advanced technologies and wellbeing products can offer interesting opportunities, but they are not accessible to everyone in the same way because of differences in economic, cultural and regional resources.
Even modifying certain aspects of lifestyle, which is fundamental in building a healthy life and, in the long run, healthy longevity, is not feasible for everyone. This is not a matter of personal willpower or motivation, but of an objective lack of concrete freedom and economic and cultural tools.
There is also another issue: much health knowledge and many health technologies have historically been developed on populations that are not always representative, effectively creating gender and ethnic gaps. In this regard, the National Institute of Health explicitly requires sex to be considered as a biological variable in the design, analysis and reporting of studies, precisely to improve the quality and applicability of research.
For this reason, health cannot be considered only an individual responsibility, but requires inclusive public choices, regulation, accessibility and education. Otherwise, it risks becoming a new language of privilege.
5. Navigating the prevention market: the power of choice
Prevention is increasingly present in the market, with products, supplements and technologies, especially driven by the development of artificial intelligence, constantly expanding and updating. This is a positive evolution because it can make health more measurable and personalised, but it also carries a risk: turning prevention into indiscriminate and impulsive consumption, with the danger of becoming attached to health-oriented products and programs without real awareness or biological need.
In the sea of available information, we may feel more confused than autonomous. The World Health Organization speaks of an infodemic when an excess of information, including false or misleading information, generates confusion, risky behaviours and distrust in health authorities. We are exposed to a constant flow of health messages that are not always reliable or free from vested interests. And with artificial intelligence as a vehicle for health information, this issue becomes even more delicate.
The most useful prevention and true personalisation do not arise only from more sophisticated solutions, but also from the ability to choose what is useful, sustainable and coherent with one’s life, always supported by the relevant health professionals.
6. Health education is an infrastructure for healthy longevity
This topic has already surfaced across the previous ones. If we want longevity to be more democratic, we need a widespread educational foundation, capable of helping people understand health, evaluate information, recognise their own needs and turn knowledge into concrete choices.
Health education means fostering more autonomous citizens, not more obedient consumers. It is defined as health literacy, but it goes beyond the mere ability to read a medical leaflet or search for information online. It means strengthening practical skills: how to build sustainable habits, read the body’s signals, manage energy, ask better questions, evaluate sources and make informed decisions.
From this perspective, health education is not an addition to health systems, but a true infrastructure for prevention and healthy longevity; and ultimately for democratic participation. This theme is also central for younger generations, because educating people about health means shaping more autonomous, aware individuals who are capable of contributing to the building of healthier communities.
Health literacy is a fundamental part of health empowerment >
7. Connection, belonging and sense of purpose: health needs relationships and meaning
Longevity is not only biology. Relationships, belonging, sense of community and purpose are deep dimensions of health that allow longevity to become vitality; and they influence the way we face stress, build resilience, find motivation and give direction to our choices.
In this regard, social isolation and loneliness are now recognised as public health issues. The World Health Organisation emphasises that they have an important impact on physical health, mental health, quality of life and longevity, and estimates that around one in six people worldwide experiences loneliness. The National Institute on Aging also highlights that isolation and loneliness can influence the physical and mental health of older adults.
But connection does not simply mean having contacts; it means being able to rely on meaningful relationships, feeling recognised, giving and receiving support. In the same way, a sense of purpose is not necessarily a grand life mission; it can simply be a daily direction: feeling useful, cultivating values, contributing, learning, caring, creating bonds.
This point is particularly important because it brings longevity back to a human level. Living longer does not only mean keeping the body efficient, but remaining part of a web of relationships, meanings and possibilities.
In this article, you can explore all the determinants of health >
REFERENCE PANELS AND SESSIONS
The key points of this article were inspired by the panels and talks of the Milan Longevity Summit 2026. Below I report some of the reference sessions, followed by the profiles of some speakers and professionals who contributed to the discussion.
– Setting the direction for a One Health future
– The One Health economy
– Global health governance
– The missing system: why longevity begins inside
– The consumer shift in wellness & nutrition: trust, choice, misinformation
– Defining success: what metrics does One Health actually need?
– Food as medicine: precision nutrition, business models & access
– Beyond the self: rethinking time, death, and legacy
– The human exposome: from longevity biotech to design exposure
– Excercise and longevity: optimizing health across the lifespan
– The science of sel-care
– The rise of longevity medicine: the physician’s role
– The healthspan revolution: how AI and predictive diagnostics can prevent people from becoming patient
Alessandra Perrazzelli, John Fullerton, Kira Fortune, Rosa Martinez Rodriguez, Giacomina Chiaradia, Felice Lopane, Joshua Freedman, Daniela Cerrato, Manon Sarah Littek, Tine Hertz, Rosanna Tarricone, Yongjie Yon, Antonio Iannone, Amy Godfrey, Bodil Siden, Christian Pichler, Florian Muller, Nelida Leiva Eriksson, Christine Gould, Thomas Winkelmann, Tommaso Barba, Antonio Forenza, David Furman, Gerome Guiot, Joanna Bensz, Nicola Palmarini, Tina Woods, Annabella Amatulli, Alessandro Portolan, Filippo Ongaro, Andrea B. Maier, Gooneratne Mayoni, Nirusha Kumaran.Puoi leggere la versione in inglese di questo articolo cliccando qui >
