Sweden has one of the oldest populations in the world. The dramatic demographic changes underscore the urgent need to investigate in aging research with the major goal of identifying intervention strategies for longer and healthier lives. NEAR focus 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 three years shows that NEAR will be increasingly used by national and international researchers with high scientific profile 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 provides nationally representative health-related data that allows tracing of societal changes, time trends and generational differences in older adults’ health.

The long-term plan of NEAR includes continuous expansion by adding new data, new databases, linking with registers and interaction 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.