Monday, November 10, 2025.- The International Congress on Dependency and Quality of Life promoted by the Edad&Vida Foundation celebrates its tenth edition consolidated as the national reference Forum on the integration of social and health services. From tomorrow and for two days, under the slogan: “Caring together, we will care better”; more than 600 professionals, researchers, public officials, and representatives of the private business sector and the third sector will share experiences and proposals to advance towards a more human and sustainable INTEGRATED care model, placing people at the center of policies and care practices. Nearly 10 million people over 65 years of age already live in Spain (20% of the population), a figure that will grow with the aging of the baby boom generation.

The event, organized by the Edad&Vida Foundation, will address key issues around the central focus of socio-health integration in its four main modules. Simultaneously, it will delve into different topics on population aging and its associated elements through its twelve parallel tables.

The Edad&Vida Congress opens two days of debate that start by giving the floor to those who matter most: the recipients of the services. People with high dependency, elderly people with high autonomy, with incipient degenerative processes, informal caregivers, will state their expectations and desires regarding how they want to be cared for. From there, four core modules set the pace: (1) “Beyond social and health, a comprehensive sustainability approach”, focused on the added value to socio-health integration by disciplines such as architecture or urban planning with a community vision; (2) a critical review of integration models in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Sweden; (3) the ABC of integrated care with evaluated practical experiences from Catalonia, Castilla y León, and Andorra; and (4) the “care dividend” focused on showing how investing in integrated care not only improves people's quality of life but also generates economic, social, and health returns.

Added to this are twelve parallel sessions on training for caregivers, governance and socio-health coordination, prevention of chronicity, public-private alliances to sustain socio-health systems, territorial responses to the care needs of the dependent population, healthy aging and finances for longevity, therapeutic adherence and home care, good treatment, supervision of home care services (SAD), senior living, and the key role of nutrition and dysphagia in centers for the elderly. The program includes a joint conference by the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Social Rights.

In short, an ambitious and actionable journey, with top-level national and international speakers, who will center the debate on the search for financing and governance models that guarantee the sustainability of the socio-health care system. This meeting aspires to build a real alliance between institutions, professionals, and citizens to care better by caring together.

“Socio-health integration: we have advanced, but the road is long”

The president of the Congress Program Committee of the Edad&Vida Foundation, Josep Maria Via i Redons, highlights the importance of moving towards real integration between social and health services, recalling that the COVID-19 pandemic made visible a lack that the sector had been denouncing for years. “The central purpose of this Congress is to show the consequences of not having a correct integration of social services with health services. There is no magic solution: we need training, cultural changes, and evaluated experiences to move forward,” he points out.

Josep Maria Via also recalls that the Spanish system carries a conceptual problem that affects both management and social perception: “A nursing home is normally not a socio-health resource; it is a social resource that, when it needs health care, must turn to the public system. The misuse of the term ‘socio-health’ generates confusion and erroneous expectations, and often leaves families in a difficult-to-navigate bureaucratic labyrinth,” he explains.

The president of the congress highlights concrete examples of innovation, such as the social viewer incorporated into the clinical history in Catalonia, which allows social variables to be integrated into medical decision-making. “It is not the same to need a prosthesis if you live on a seventh floor without an elevator as on a ground floor,” he recalls, insisting on the need for a truly comprehensive approach to each patient. Another issue that will be addressed these days will be the difficulty in recruiting and retaining personnel in a sector with precarious salaries and conditions and the need to combine training and sensitivity to provide comprehensive care.

“It is urgent to revise the care system model”

For her part, Dr. Ana Pastor, former Minister of Health, who presides over the table “Viable Utopians: the search for a life with purpose as a fundamental axis of a new socio-health approach” (November 11, 5:30 p.m.), will demand revising the current socio-health model and applying a profound transformation that combines humanism, efficiency, and technology at the service of people. “We must absolutely debureaucratize the system and make all technological evolution available to older people. Technology must allow for personalized and quality care, not add obstacles,” says Pastor.

From her experience as former Minister of Health and public manager, Pastor insists on the urgency of facing necessary changes in the care system: “We must revise the financing model if we want to guarantee the sustainability of the system. Today we live with chronicity and multi-pathology in a system designed for acute patients, and that is why we need to reorient and apply innovation also in the socio-health field.”

Ana Pastor will also highlight the importance of rational planning of human resources and strengthening professional careers. “We must rethink the organization of centers and services to guarantee equity, advance in specialization, introduce generalized quality indicators, and listen to professionals and managers. Professional careers are currently not very motivating; we need to improve them if we want to retain talent,” she explains.

About Edad&Vida

It is a private foundation focused on improving the quality of life of older people and those who are about to become so. Its mission is to promote, from companies in various sectors, in collaboration with research and training institutions and older people's organizations, the search for solutions to improve the quality of life of older people. Its reason for being is to facilitate co-responsibility and balance between the public sector and private initiative, in order to respond to the economic and social challenges of demographic change, acting from a perspective of efficiency and sustainability, generating an independent state of opinion that facilitates the improvement of the behaviors of all actors in the environment of people for when they are older.

More information: www.edad-vida.org

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