Collectively, chronic diseases comprise the majority of global disease burden and are the most common causes of mortality (http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/tools/data-visualizations). Medical research has historically targeted diseases separately, assuming that organ systems act independently. Yet, optimal functionality for any single system requires overall organismal health, impelling inquiries into the interdependence of these relationships to develop multiscale network models that incorporate the physiologic changes accompanying aging. Targeting diseases individually for an aging population is also complicated because most elders have multiple morbidities that interact, confounding therapeutic strategies. By understanding how aging enables pathology, new therapeutics will arise for multiple chronic diseases, providing an opportunity to extend human healthspan by targeting aging directly. There is cause for optimism; however, much must happen to achieve this goal, including an infusion of resources to accelerate research and regulatory changes that push medical care toward chronic disease prevention. Here, we focus on a limited set of short- and intermediate-term scientific goals that will accelerate geroscience and will launch novel approaches to reduce the impact of the major global healthcare burden: the chronic diseases of aging.