Community for Successful Ageing (ComSA) 

The Community for Successful Ageing (ComSA) is the Foundation's latest groundbreaking project: a community-wide approach to forge an integrated system of comprehensive programmes and services with the aim to promote health and wellbeing over the life course, and to enable ageing in place.

The impetus for ComSA comes from insights into the needs and aspirations of older persons and the community resources available to their continuing healthcare and personal growth. Underpinning ComSA is the understanding that health is not just a biophysical issue but necessarily includes psychological, emotional and spiritual wellness, and that, a person, along the course of his life, needs to be recognised as much for his continuing potential as much as for his past contributions, and thrives in the loam of social connectedness, while isolation, loneliness and boredom - the three plagues that commonly beset older people - thwart the best attempts of medical care.

For reasons of efficacy as well, there are compelling reasons to create a new comprehensive system that pulls together multiple services, disciplines, branches of policymaking including urban planning, private enterprise and importantly, civic participation, to build environments where people thrive as they age - hence, our programme title, 'Community for Successful Ageing', or 'ComSA' in short.

From the Foundation, ComSA brings together the multidisciplinary skills we have honed into a unique contribution for optimising opportunities in longevity and improving the quality of life of older persons in the interconnected areas of health, personal empowerment, social participation and wellbeing.

This capacity is grown from our pioneering work in community-based primary healthcare, including care management and team-managed, person-centred care, and elder empowerment and training programmes, as well as organisational knowhow in forging multiparty partnerships and engagement with elders and volunteers.

ComSA@Whampoa was born when the Foundation was invited by the City For All Ages (CFAA) Whampoa to participate in their vision of catalysing community action to create an elder-friendly neighbourhood. This generous opportunity granted by Whampoa's grassroots organisations and the Ageing Planning Office (APO), Ministry of Health sparked the momentum for a series of developments and budding partnerships that will continue to see the Implementation of ComSA's essential 'community-wide approach'.