When the concept of active aging first surfaced in the late 1990s, industry executive Colin Milner immediately grasped its powerful implication: why shouldn’t all our years be alive with purpose, and brimming with healthful activity?

What started as enthusiasm became a commitment, and the commitment became a life’s mission. In 2001, Milner left his job as president of a leading industry association to create a new kind of organization. The International Council on Active Aging® (ICAA) was born.

Milner’s efforts have turned the idea of active aging into an entire industry, and inspired researchers, organizations and health and wellness professionals around the world to come together with the common goal of changing the way society perceives and responds to its older population.

The timing was ideal; while the United Nations and World Health Organizations were awakening to the need for policies to support active aging on a global scale, ICAA was emerging as an entity that could consolidate the knowledge and goals of groups from disparate global jurisdictions to help organizations and institutions craft these policies – while also becoming the go-to source for anyone needing information on older-adult issues. As a result, leaders from sectors including for-profit, not-for-profit, wellness, manufacturing, food service and even national governments have increasingly sought our counsel.

Our educational platforms are as multi-faceted as they are effective in disseminating the active-aging message. We enroll world-renowned experts from medicine, science and academe as members of our advisory boards. We engage leading authors and presenters. We educate industries about how to make their products and services more appropriate for the older population, then guide their marketing efforts.

We are also one of the few organizations that conducts primary industry research focused on wellness – while our store of secondary research reports and white papers has become a prime source for those spreading the active-aging message.

Unfettered by the constraints of geography, demographics, culture, politics or the status quo, ICAA continues to expand its knowledge and influence across multiple sectors, countries and organizations – to the point where today we have the programs, the expertise, the facilities and the workforce to champion the causes of active aging in a way no one else can.