The network is led by Professor Geir Arild Espnes, who was the initiator, and is presently the director of the Center for Health Promotion Research at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

The Network acknowledges that a major health challenge exists in health on the global level and that it is the convergence of two trends – a constantly aging population and an increasing development of Non Communicable Diseases (NCD'S). The Network also fully understands the need for attacking the challenges that this represent in a more positive way than simply working only at the disease or disease prevention level, or over-focusing on risks. Instead, the Network focuses it work on the challenges of how to change societies in a way that better maintains and develop people's health. For research, this means having good health as an output variable rather than using disease avoidance as a variable.

The Network's vision is to:

1. be an arena for collaboration on health promotion research for universities and university colleges in Norway with health promotion or public health as a component of their research agenda. The network is also open for research institutions with the same focus.
2. engage in the creation of a better knowledge base, with better competencies, and more insight into public health research; these results can be utilized by decision makers and policy document writers
3. be an arena where the Health Directorate and Government ministries can engage with the entire sector of research on health promotion and research.   .
4. be an arena where the universities and university colleges can carry out research on health promotion and where new research can be developed and complementarity in perspectives can create new research projects and programs.
5. have working groups as a main form of organization where different  tasks in health promotion and public health research that are the focus of the network can be discussed prior to later discussions in the main Network Forum.  

Today, the Network has 17 member institutions and is willing and able to coordinate tasks on healthy aging.