Matteo Cesari, Marco Canevelli, Jotheeswaran Amuthavalli Thiyagarajan, Hidenori Arai, Praset Assantachai, Piu Chan, Jagadish K Chhetri, Eduardo Ferriolli, Leon Geffen, Celia L Gregson, Giovanni Guaraldi, Luis Miguel Gutierrez Robledo, S. Hammami, Hyobum Jang, Sebastiana Kalula, Arvind Mathur, Reshma Aziz Merchant, Déborah Oliveira, Mônica Rodrigues Perracini, Mirko Petrovic, Maria Cristina Polidori-Nelles, Leocadio Rodríguez Mañas, John W. Rowe, Saniya Sabzwari, Ritu Sadana, Yuka Sumi, Olena Tomarevska, Bruno Vellas, Renuka Visvanathan, Jean Woo, Finbarr C Martin
As the global population ages, especially in low- and middle-income countries, there is an urgent need to rethink how health in older age is understood and addressed. Frailty has long served as a clinical construct to identify vulnerability and guide tailored, specialist care for older people. In 2015, the World Health Organisation introduced the concept of intrinsic capacity (IC) as part of its healthy ageing framework, offering a structured, capacity-based approach to promote functional ability. While conceptually distinct, frailty and IC are complementary. Frailty highlights the need for specialised care in complex cases, whereas IC supports early intervention and prevention across broader populations. This paper explores their differences, areas of overlap and how their integration can support a continuum of care that spans primary to specialist settings. Integrating these concepts connects prevention, health promotion and complex care management. By aligning clinical and public health perspectives, the combined use of frailty and IC offers a holistic, person-centred approach to care system transformation, with the potential to drive coordinated strategies that strengthen both geriatric practice and public health across diverse populations.