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Thomae, H. & Maddox, G.L. (Eds.)(1982), New Perspectives on Old Age: A Message to Decision Makers. New York: Springer

This edited collection was commissioned by the IAG Council in anticipation of the 1982 UN World Assembly on Ageing. Part I is entitled "Foundations of a Policy for the Aged in the Eighties and Beyond: A Message to the World Assembly on Aging of the United Nations". It begins with a discussion of population aging, pointing out that it presents challenges with respect to economic development, health care and social services. Twelve recommendations are made to optimize the well-being of older persons. These include promoting multicultural planning, allocating resources for research and practice, extending social security benefits, developing housing that takes into consideration traditional family arrangements, fostering coordinated health care delivery, placing greater emphasis on prevention, developing strategies to combat ageism, expanding education and training of seniors and service providers, being sensitive to rural issues and, developing under the UN and in cooperation with WHO, ILO and other agencies and groups, an international resource centre on aging that would be an information repository and foster information exchange and dissemination.

Part II, entitled "Findings from Research on Aging" is described as presenting a framework for decision making as well as highlighting important issues and research on health care, from the biological sciences, and from the behavioural and social sciences. Chapter titles and authors are as follows: (1) Aging people and aging populations: A framework for decision making (G. Maddox), (2) Basic issues in health care (A.Svanborg, S. Landahl, & D. Mellstrom), (3) Biological aging: Searching for the mechanisms of aging (A.Viidik), (4) Aging and society: Contributions of behavioural and social gerontology (J. Helander & H. Thomae), (5) Aging and old age in developing countries (B. Schade). The remaining four chapters, included in Part III, are described as "background papers". Titles and authors are as follows: (6) Aging: Policy issues for the developed countries of the world (B. Neugarten), (7) Gerontology in the eighties: Basic research in biology and medicine (D. Chebotarev), (8) Gerontology policy issues in social medicine (J. Gonzalez-Aragon) and (9) Some comments from the Asia-Oceania Region (R. Inall).