Memorandum by Professor Alan Walker, Dr
Joanne Cook and Mr Peter Traynor
EUROPEAN RESEARCH PRIORITIES IN THE FIELD
OF AGEING
This submission addresses the strategic questions
posed by the Committee. It consists of a summary of the outcomes
from a project spanning two and a half years that has been identifying
the current gaps in ageing research across Europe and developing
recommendations aimed at promoting better co-ordination of research
in Europe, more cross-national collaboration and more interdisciplinary
research.
INTRODUCTION
The European Forum on Population Ageing Research
(FORUM) is an Accompanying Measure under the EU's Fifth Framework
Programme. Drawing inspiration from the UK National Collaboration
on Ageing Research (NCAR) FORUM was established in April 2002
to build upon the Research Directorate's efforts to enhance ageing
research, by encouraging knowledge sharing, improving channels
of communication, promoting broader European co-operation and
raising the profile of European research on ageing. To achieve
these objectives FORUM organised a number of events, including
workshops, meetings and user consultations, which were attended
by many key people in the field of ageing research in Europe,
including scientists, policy makers, funders and user groups.
The iterative process began with a series of three scientific
workshops which focused on developing key ideas and recommendations
regarding the future of ageing research, concentrating on the
areas of Genetics, Longevity and Demography; Quality of Life;
and Health and Social Care. These draft recommendations were then
considered at a meeting of the European Forum of research funders,
then a user consultation conference and then again in a series
of three more scientific workshops (a total of over 200 scientists
have been involved in this work). Finally they were discussed,
amended and approved by a second meeting of the European Forum
in June 2004. The FORUM project concludes in December 2004 with
a conference to present the final set of recommendations concerning
European research on ageing.
Background to FORUM
— A major point of reference for this
project is population ageing (Europe is the oldest region in the
world) and the importance of responding to demographic changes
in a pro-active and positive manner.
— The EU recognises the importance
of co-ordination and information sharing in ageing research but,
in contrast to the US, European ageing research currently lacks
a co-ordinated approach.
— Scientists have been pushing for
greater co-ordination for some time and continue to pursue cross-national
and collaborative research on ageing and to argue that such research
should be higher on the policy agenda.
— FORUM emerged from a recognition
of these important issues and reflected the creation, in 2001,
of a new collaborative structure on ageing research in the UK.
The Key Action 6 on the Ageing Population and their Disabilities
(under Framework Programme 5) created the opportunity for the
project to obtain funding.
Objectives of FORUM
The FORUM project has five specific objectives:
— To promote European co-operation
in ageing research.
— To develop synergies between national
and international programmes.
— To improve channels of communication
between Key Action 6 and national research efforts.
— To stimulate interdisciplinary research.
— To promote improved public awareness
of ageing research.
Summary of recommendations
What follows is a short selection of some of
the many recommendations generated by the FORUM process. The full
list can be found in the final report of the project on the FORUM
website at http://www.shef.ac.uk/ageingresearch. The recommendations
command a high level of consensus among scientists, end user groups
and national research funders and policy makers.
Key recommendations
These represent the top five priorities to emerge
from the FORUM process:
— The recommendations from FORUM should
be used to develop targeted funding for ageing research in Framework
Programme 7.
— Major research and policy gains would
be made from establishing a European Institute on Ageing to bring
all disciplines on ageing together—this would provide the
European identity that ageing research urgently needs to maximise
its potential.
— Specific funding structures are needed
to develop interdisciplinary and European research on ageing,
research funding bodies/councils need to work together to provide
funding incentives for this research and career structures need
to be developed to enable and encourage researchers to take this
direction.
— Involving users in research is essential
and more research is needed on good practice and models of user
involvement.
— Researchers in this field are ageing
and there is a lack of new talent coming into ageing research—support
structures need to be funded to attract new researchers.
Topic specific research priorities
A summary of the priorities under each of the
three topics (quality of life; health and social care; genetics,
longevity and demography) can be found in the appendix. The following
are general priorities spanning the three topics.
— More focus should be given to comparative
social policy and evaluating the efficacy of different welfare
states and health care systems.
— More research on Europe's immensely
diverse populations, and in particular how such diversity, of
ethnicity, gender relations and migration patterns for instance,
interacts with the ageing process.
— More studies of the interaction of
environment and ageing, for instance the differences in the ageing
process in rural and urban areas and the effect of residential
versus the home environment on ageing and quality of life.
— Evaluating interventions—such
as healthy and active ageing (including the ethics of such interventions).
— Transitions in older age, including
changes in personal resources, family changes, retirement or continuing
to work post-retirement.
— Research into older people as the
providers as well as receivers of care and the various formal
and information relationships involved in care.
— Agency in old age: older people's
preferences and involvement in research and direct and indirect
discrimination.
Research methods and approaches
— Increased funding is needed to develop
the basic research tools for collaboration at a European level,
including new comparative methodologies and databases, standardised
instruments and greater co-ordination of data collection.
— European researchers need to work
together to develop appropriate models and concepts, and to reach
a consensus on the definition and measurement of concepts which
would account for cross-cultural definitions whilst preserving
context specific meanings.
— The diversity of ageing across Europe
deserves greater recognition and exploration, as does the situation
of different ethnic and migrant groups. More should be made of
the richness of Europe's population, and there should be a focus
on heterogeneity rather than simply looking for averages.
— Ageing research should be established
as a discipline in its own right.
European collaboration
— An appropriate infrastructure needs
to be developed at both the national and international levels
to facilitate greater European collaboration. This should include
the establishment or strengthening of national institutes of ageing,
and the creation of a European institute or agency on ageing.
Other developments could include dedicated journals, conferences
and funding structures, better research training and a web based
database of European ageing research.
— European networks on ageing research
are needed to bring together scientists, user groups and older
people to enable greater collaboration and dissemination of research
on ageing. These networks need to be long term to build sustained
collaboration. All stakeholders in ageing research also need to
be included, not just researchers.
— Co-ordinating European collaboration
on ageing would offer substantial benefits, including greater
coherence in research and understanding across Europe, more opportunities
for comparative analysis and policy and better use of Europe's
high quality data in fields such as historical demographics, genetics
and the care of older people.
— The recruitment and training of scholars,
in particular promising young scholars, from different European
countries needs to be promoted, to ensure optimal allocation of
human capital and the build-up of efficient research teams and
centres.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
— There is wide consensus among scientists
that there should be a greater emphasis on interdisciplinary research
in the field of ageing, but that this should not mean the dissolving
of disciplinary identities. Indeed disciplinary identities should
be maintained: the challenge is to develop synergy through research.
— Finding the necessary balance between
the different disciplines requires a structure for better learning
and understanding of different disciplines. There is a need for
a common language and a role for the EU in creating a common database.
— Greater funding should be given to
interdisciplinary centres, creating financial incentives to conduct
interdisciplinary research and to educating, rewarding and developing
appropriate career structures for interdisciplinary experts.
— Interdisciplinary research often
falls between disciplinary funding bodies/research councils. There
is a need for funding to go across disciplinary boundaries. Therefore,
specific funding mechanisms are needed and the EU should play
a role in facilitating this.
Involving the users of research
— Scientists are committed to involving
users in research but acknowledged various difficulties including
selecting who to involve and which projects such involvement would
be suitable for.
— It was agreed that the formulation
of a research agenda should involve a partnership model in which
all stakeholders contribute to its development.
— A new methodology is needed in order
to gain the maximum benefits from user involvement in research,
and this should involve looking at existing examples of good practice
and training for both researchers and users. If funders wish to
encourage user involvement then the additional funds and time
must be made available.
Policy recommendations
— Interdisciplinary, comparative cross-national
and longitudinal research are difficult, time consuming and expensive
but they are extremely necessary. Research funders must provide
for this if they want the advances in knowledge that this research
can bring.
— There should be a focus on demonstrating
how research on ageing can contribute to people's lives and government
policy, and the public should be convinced of the value of ageing
research.
— Experiences of good practice for
the effective dissemination of European research need to be developed
and facilitated. This aspect of research often takes place when
funding has expired and little resources are available for this
critical stage of the research work. An additional funded phase
for dissemination is needed in national and European funding programmes.
— The links between research findings
and policy need to be developed. Currently the value of research
is lost because of inadequate dissemination and the failure to
carry through research findings into policy impact.
— Research findings should reach as
large an audience as possible, including policy-makers. There
is an important role for NGOs to play in translating findings
into more understandable information and policy recommendations.
For NGOs to carry out this task properly they must be funded.
— National funding bodies must support
the future of ageing research and in order to do so effectively,
ageing research has to be seen as a priority for research funding
across Europe. The EU has an important facilitating, accompanying
and co-ordinating role to play, for example, through networks
and Framework funding.
— Each national funding body should
have a commitment to fund a programme of research on ageing or
at the very least a collection of co-ordinated projects. Otherwise
the absence of this leads to exclusion from networks such as ERA-NET.
— All scientists and user groups agreed
that the EU has a fundamental role to play in supporting, encouraging
and if necessary obliging national governments to organise at
least some form of "national agenda on ageing research".
Without such measures the co-ordination of research on ageing
will never reach the organised levels it receives in the US and
this could damage the competitive advantage of European research
in this field.
CONCLUSION
The aim of the FORUM project was to bring together
the different groups active in the field of ageing research in
Europe: scientists, research funders and user groups, to share
knowledge and good practice and to identify the key priorities
for European research in this field. The project has been very
successful in bringing these groups together and has generated
a great deal of enthusiasm among scientists. FORUM has gathered
a wealth of valuable knowledge on interdisciplinary research and
priorities for future research in this field. This knowledge will
be shared at the final conference of the FORUM project, in Brussels
in December and through the website and newsletters. However,
whilst FORUM is drawing to a close, it is essential that those
involved in the various aspects of ageing research take forward
what has been learnt and work together to promote cross national
and interdisciplinary collaboration. The ultimate aim of this
endeavour, like all research on ageing, must be to extend the
quality of older people's lives.
NEXT STEP
ERA-AGE Project
At the first meeting of the European Forum in
March 2003, participants asked the FORUM team to develop an ERA-NET
Co-ordination Action proposal to the EU's Sixth Framework Programme.
This application was successful. The European Research Area on
Population Ageing Research (ERA-AGE) began on 1 March 2004 and
runs for four years. The groundwork for this project has been
the European FORUM project, and the priorities developed by the
FORUM process will be used to inform the work of ERA-AGE.
ERA-AGE is a consortium of nine partner countries
and five associate partnerships, the aim of which is to create
the framework for a European research area in the field of population
ageing research, enabling research funders to work together more
effectively and therefore gain maximum added value from national
investments in this field. For more information please see the
ERA AGE website (www.shef.ac.uk/era-age).
October 2004
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