Ageing Well (Māori: Kia eke kairangi ki te taikaumātuatanga) was one of New Zealand's eleven collaborative research programmes known as National Science Challenges.

Running from 2015 to 2024, the focus of Ageing Well National Science Challenge (AWNSC) research was sustaining health and wellbeing towards the end of life, particularly in Māori and Pacific populations in New Zealand.

[12] The focus of Ageing Well was ageing-related issues in Aotearoa New Zealand; its official objective was "to harness science to sustain health and wellbeing into the later years of life.

[2]: 96–97 Ageing Well's first research publication was in 2016, by Valery Feigin, Rita Krishnamurthi, and their team at AUT's National Institute for Stroke and Applied Neurosciences (NISAN).

Pasifika are the only New Zealand ethnic group whose mortality has stagnated rather than improved in recent years, due to the cost of medical care and cultural and language barriers.

[2]: 80–83  A two year study by El-Shadan (Dan) Tautolo of Samoan, Tongan, and Cook Island Pasifika grandparents, co-designed by the participants, found that a strong cultural identity was a predictor of good health.

[17] Research led by Pauline Norris examined cognitive decline in aged Pasifika, and found that there were significant problems in getting a diagnosis, accessing support services, and overcoming language barriers.

[7]: 19, 36–37 Māori in general show more positive attitudes towards ageing than non-Māori, but have poorer health statistics including chronic illness, higher social isolation, and lower quality of life.

[7]: 28  Charles Waldegrave and Catherine Love began a project working with kaumātua to ascertain their values and preferences, which can be at odds with a health system and policies designed from a European perspective.

[7]: 39–41 Sally Keeling and Hamish Jamieson of the University of Otago, Christchurch, studied loneliness and social isolation in older New Zealanders, analysing 72,000 aged-care admissions recorded in the InterRAI database.

[23] They also found social factors such as living alone, loneliness, and having stressed carers significantly increased the chance of being admitted to aged care, much more so than medical conditions like incontinence.

An increasing number of senior people are renting late in life, and Kay Saville-Smith's research group discovered that older renters are far more likely than homeowners to have chronic health problems, live in poorly-maintained houses, and enter residential aged care.

[28][29] DEWS, which grew out of the PhD research of Julie Daltrey, is designed for registered nurses to monitor clinical indicators (such as sleeping more, or lowered appetite) that strongly correlated with hospitalisation or death, and detect deterioration as early as possible.

[30] Twenty per cent of the residents in their study turned out to be moderately to severely frail, which was strongly associated with continuing health problems: 79% of that group subsequently had an unplanned hospitalisation.

[33] Teh had previously studied the effectiveness of two programmes for seniors that promoted strength and balance and improved cooking skills, finding they were not only stalling physical fraily but building social connection.