COVID-19 as a trigger for innovation in policy action for older persons? Evidence from Asia

COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on older people, in terms of their susceptibility to the disease and increased fatality rates, while also by creating barriers to health care access, social isolation, psychological and financial burdens. Policy responses provide an opportunity to understand whether the demands of this crisis have led to the development of policy innovations to meet the needs of aging populations. We analyzed an illustrative corpus of policies collected by HelpAge International across Asia in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam. We identified different policy types that impacted older persons during the pandemic. We also observed the degree to which these policies support arguments for paradigmatic policy changes by examining different models of intersectoral and multisectoral collaborations, and the kinds of policies where these multiactor arrangements were the most common. From our analysis, we identify two main areas where COVID-19 policies are most likely to lead to more long-lasting innovation in Asia. The first is in the upgrading of infrastructures to ensure access to benefits, and to develop remote and doorstep banking. The second area is well-being and caring support, such as the development of programs to provide increased services to support home-based older persons, including telemedicine, delivery services for medical and other supplies, and remote support for older persons and their carers. These changes, while important, are consistent with “acceleration” models of policy change, where COVID-19 responses sped up, and scaled up, programs consistent with current institutional and organizational structures.