India’s demographic transition is accelerating, with rapid growth in the population aged 50 years and above. As longevity rises, the central question is whether added years are lived with health, functional ability, and economic security, or with avoidable morbidity that strains households and health systems. This creates an urgent need to re-balance policy attention towards prevention within India’s healthy ageing agenda, and to build a clearer evidence base on what preventive interventions deliver for society and the economy.
Adult immunisation sits at the heart of this shift. While vaccination is widely understood in India as a childhood intervention, the disease risks that accumulate later in life, including respiratory infections and their complications, can erode functional ability, increase healthcare utilisation, and accelerate household financial stress. Yet adult immunisation remains peripheral in India’s mainstream policy and financing debates, in part because it is rarely framed in economic terms that speak to productivity, fiscal sustainability, and long- term system resilience.
The planned research emerging out of this workshop will examine how adult immunisation can deliver value for India through improved health outcomes, reduced downstream costs of care, and wider productivity gains, while also exploring pragmatic pathways for uptake in a mixed health system. It will place particular emphasis on the 50 plus population and the policy opportunities emerging from India’s evolving healthy ageing agenda. Where relevant, it will also consider how adult immunisation could be reflected in national reference frameworks and data systems to strengthen visibility and accountability.
This workshop convenes experts to examine how adult immunisation can be positioned as a pillar of healthy ageing. The discussion will focus on value beyond clinical efficacy, including reduced downstream costs of care and insurance claims, protection of productivity and labour participation, and implications for health system sustainability in a mixed public private setting.
