Sweden has one of the oldest populations in the world. The dramatic demographic changes underscore the urgent need to investigate aging research with the major goal of identifying intervention strategies for longer and healthier lives. NEAR focuses solely on aging and health, thus contributing to achieving this goal.

A broad multidisciplinary perspective is needed to achieve outstanding research in aging. NEAR includes datasets with medical, psychological, and social data covering social gerontology, public health, biomedicine, neuroscience, and care sciences. The availability of these diverse data in such a large population makes NEAR unique.

Our scientific production from the first five years shows that NEAR is increasingly used by national and international researchers with high scientific profiles as the infrastructure provides unique information for aging research and policy development.

NEAR includes 15 databases covering older populations from almost all parts of Sweden. The large sample size (90,000 persons), provides nationally representative health-related data that allows for tracing societal changes, time trends, and generational differences in older adults’ health.

NEAR’s long-term plan includes continuous expansion by adding new data and databases, linking with registers, and interacting with related international infrastructures.

We have developed a detailed policy regarding accessibility, rules, and procedures for using NEAR data for academic and non-academic users. We found solutions to guarantee open access to all users while taking the ethical and legal aspects of sensitive personal data into account.