Active ageing (AA) policies aim to improve quality of life of older people by enabling better social participation and inclusion. Despite many international initiatives to promote AA undertaken in recent years, Italy did not systematically address this policy challenge until very recently. This paper presents the first national Plan-of-Action (PoA) (2019-2022) adopted by this country for supporting policy design and recommendation in this field. The PoA aims to create a multilevel, co-managed coordination of AA policies, by involving a network of national and regional policy makers, experts, researchers and stakeholders in civil society. The ad-hoc consultation process established for this purpose helps the recognition of different interests and expectations on AA, fostering new solutions by involvement, consultation and joint discussion of policy options. The PoA is designed to cover the traditional policy cycle, including the stages of agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation and monitoring. At the end of the period covered by the PoA, an Italian AA Strategy will be launched to achieve systematic impact in this field, thus ensuring a long-term, sustainable impact on national and regional policy makers, civil society and research community.
Keywords: COVID-19; Italy; active ageing; older people; social inclusion; social participation; social policy.