Series: The New Dynamics of Ageing
This series showcases state-of-the-art research from the New Dynamics of Ageing programme, the first multi-disciplinary and the largest programme of ageing research in Europe. Its findings provide insights into ageing and its impact on a global scale.
Together, the books in the series embrace all disciplines with an interest in ageing, encompassing direct engagement of older people and user organisations, and contain all of the main research findings, making them an essential source of reference.
The New Dynamics of Ageing
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This chapter discusses the impact of hip fracture in older age and in particular factors affecting recovery of physical function and wellbeing. It focuses particularly on a study of the impact of depression following hip fracture in older adults, and the influence of this depression on a range of outcomes including immune function, stress hormones, illness perceptions, physical function, and length of stay in health service and rehabilitation facilities. It shows that depression is common following hip fracture among older people, and is the biggest predictor of a slower recovery and poorer function in terms of immunity, wellbeing and physical ability. A pilot study associated with this research showed that illness perceptions following hip fracture did not differ between UK and Punjabi older adults, but that Punjabi speakers in India had greater levels of distress. Implications for health service policy and practice resulting from this research are discussed in this chapter, including potential intervention strategies to improve outcomes after hip fracture.
This is the first of two volumes arising from the ground-breaking New Dynamics of Ageing Research Programme. While the Programme produced many scientific papers and several project-based books this is the only place where most of the projects are represented in specially commissioned chapters that not only report the key findings of each piece of research but also place those findings in a wider context. This volume covers a wide range of state-of-the-art research on ageing, with a specific focus on active and healthy ageing, design for ageing and global issues. Each chapter contains a summary of key findings. This book follows directly from the multi-disciplinary first volume in the Policy Press NDA Series, The New Science of Ageing.
This chapter sets out a four-year, multi-disciplinary and mixed methods study of older people’s paid and unpaid work, their contributions to their households, family networks and the economy. It situates older people’s work and poverty in the cleft between widespread low-paid and insecure work, inadequate public services and India’s ambitions in the global economy, which leaves older people bolstering household and family incomes, releasing women into the labour force and providing low cost services to workers and low cost inputs to businesses. The chapter describes the team’s innovative impact strategy to generate a public discussion of older people’s rights as workers and to a pension and to secure raised social pensions.
This chapter discusses the impact of individual ageing on the wellbeing of older people and their households in low-income areas Brazil and South Africa. The research was based on a longitudinal and comparative survey of around 1000 older persons and their households in selected low-income locations in the two countries. A comparison of older people’s wellbeing levels in 2002 and 2008 found improvement over time in a range of wellbeing indicators: per capita household income and expenditure; multidimensional measures; and life satisfaction measures. For low-income households, pension income is essential to their wellbeing, livelihoods, and social inclusion. The research findings suggest that, with appropriate public policies, individual ageing is not necessarily associated with a decline in wellbeing in developing countries.
This chapter discusses strategies that older and younger people employ to negotiate stairs based on experiments performed on an instrumented staircase in lab environment aiming at identifying ways to reduce stair fall risk for the elderly. Stair negotiation was found to be more demanding for the knee and ankle joint muscles in older than younger adults, with the demand increasing further when the step-rise was higher. During descent of stairs with higher step-rises, older adults shifted the centre of mass (COM) posteriorly, behind the centre of pressure (COP) to prevent forward falling. A decreased step-going resulted in a slower descent of the centre of mass in the older adults and standing on a single leg for longer than younger adults. A greater reliance on the handrails and rotation of the body in the direction of the handrail was also observed when the step-going was decreased during descent, which allowed this task to be performed with better dynamic stability, by maintaining the COM closer to the COP. These findings have important implications for stair design and exercise programs aiming at improving safety on stairs for the elderly.
This chapter considers the role of participation in community arts as a means of promoting greater social engagement by older people. It considers the contribution of community-based activities in general and emphasises that they should be considered part of a broader programme to enhance the quality of lives of residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods. It then considers in detail the impact of one specific community arts project, detailing the enthusiastic reaction of the participants but also highlighting the need to ensure ongoing support and the need to recognise the central role of the facilitator. It concludes by re-emphasising the importance of promoting control of such community initiatives by the local residents.
This chapter concludes the book by first extracting the key findings from each of the preceeding chapters. This provides a unique summary of the major policy-orientated implications of one half of the NDA Programme. Then some of the main thematic connections between the chapters are highlighted. These include the insights they provide into the changing dynamics of ageing, the importance of design for better ageing and their demonstration of how to conduct multi-disciplinary research on ageing.
This chapter discusses the Grey and Pleasant Land project on rural ageing which focused on older people’s connections to and participation in community life in diverse rural settings in southwest England and Wales. The interdisiplinary approach used to investigate the types, extent and experiences of older people’s ‘connectivity’ in these rural places is described, including the combination of empirical and arts-based methods. Seven principal types of connectivities identified are elaborated using examples from the research findings: civic engagement; social participation; intergenerational relations; connections to the landscape; connectivity and group identity; virtual connectivity; and imaginative connectivity. The implications of these connectivities of older people as sources of rural community capital with the potential to sustain ageing populations in these areas are discussed.
This chapter discusses the collaborative research project ‘Design for Ageing that brought together stakeholders from academia and industry, to engage with active ageing participants in the co-design of smart functional clothing, with wearable electronics. The prime objective was to develop a functional clothing ‘layering system’ for participation in walking comprising; close-fitting body layer garments, with vital signs and activity monitoring, moisture management base layer styles, mid layer insulating garments, with warming devices, and outer layer protection, providing multi-modal user interfaces to facilitate outdoor healthy exercise, social engagement and enhanced well-being. Co-design methodology, new to clothing design, was adopted to help to explain complex terminologies and practices between both academic and industry stakeholders, including technologists in electronics, clothing/textiles, and gerontology. This collaborative research has contributed to training a new breed of cross-disciplinary academic researchers, in tried and tested co-design process with industry practitioners and end-users.
This is the first of two volumes arising from the ground-breaking New Dynamics of Ageing Research Programme. While the Programme produced many scientific papers and several project-based books this is the only place where most of the projects are represented in specially commissioned chapters that not only report the key findings of each piece of research but also place those findings in a wider context. This volume covers a wide range of state-of-the-art research on ageing, with a specific focus on active and healthy ageing, design for ageing and global issues. Each chapter contains a summary of key findings. This book follows directly from the multi-disciplinary first volume in the Policy Press NDA Series, The New Science of Ageing.
