Health promotion and primary prevention for older women in our region should adopt a social inclusion perspective to understand the full spectrum of challenges they face. Assessing social exclusion risk factors will help communities and agencies better meet the specific needs of older women. This includes in assessing needs, building capacity and providing suitable services for older women.

Currently, our region lacks a primary prevention framework or evidence-based practices to prevent elder abuse. Health promotion efforts predominantly focus on broad public policies like obesity prevention and alcohol campaigns, as well as gender-specific strategies such as violence prevention and sexual health, rather than specific issues affecting older women.

In 2016, the Council on the Ageing (COTA) Victoria produced a report that describes the impact of discrimination on growing up female and ageing. It highlighted the impact of gender discrimination on older women's wellbeing, stressing the need for their voices in policy and gender equality initiatives. They recommended co-designing health promotion and prevention strategies with older women's input, echoing Women's Health East's (2019) findings.

• Advocating for older women to put forward their lived experience, narrative and context in policy debates and work on gender equality as “their views and experiences should actively inform and shape any future initiatives” (p.2). Co-design of health promotion and primary prevention work for older women is vital and this reflects Women’s Health East’s (2019)
• The need to educate boys and men to respect and value women as well as respecting themselves.
• While many legislative and regulatory barriers have been dealt with, there is still a need to address the systemic barriers that older women continue to face. Intersectionality—where gender and aging intersect with discrimination—significantly impacts wellbeing and requires targeted approaches.

The wellbeing of the intersecting groups which form the population of ‘older Australians’ is not currently reported. Nonetheless, we do know that there is a diverse range of lived experiences amongst all older women and health promotion and primary prevention workers need to ensure that they apply an intersectional lens to their practice. This approach is important for addressing social exclusion, ageism, and disadvantage. For example, the impact of long-term periods of social isolation and prejudice of older people who identify as LGBTIQA+, need to be acknowledged. Amongst these impacts will be the long-term stigma, trauma and discrimination that many older women may have experienced and which may have impacted their wellbeing and life well into older age.