IHS Ageing Research
A key interest of the Institute is how people respond to and cope with chronic diseases, especially dementia, and how care services and technology can improve peoples' lives when coping with these diseases. We are particularly interested how the impact of chronic disease varies with income and how diet and alcohol consumption affect the health of older people.
The staff listed below are involved in age-related research in the following areas:
- Professor Ashley Adamson - nutritional aspects of ageing and interventions to enhance health and well-being in later life
- Dr Vera Araujo-Soares - self-care and self-management of chronic conditions (pain, cardiovascular rehabilitation and obesity) as well as on the promotion of health behaviours (e.g. sun protective behaviours, healthy diet and physical activity)
- Ms Claire Bamford - dementia care and food services for vulnerable older patients
- Professor John Bond - descriptive, explanatory, evaluative and theoretically informed research and cognitive ageing and dementia and evaluation of treatment and health service interventions.
- Dr Katie Brittain - impact of ill health on older people and carers, particularly with reference to continence management and also how physical, social and technological environment pose challenges and opportunities for older people
- Dr Claire Dickinson - applied health services focusing especially on ageing and dementia
- Dr Rachel Duncan - incidence and clinical causes of joint pain in older people
- Dr Catherine Exley - conducting research with those living with chronic or terminal illness and enhancing the availability and delivery of palliative care services to different patient groups
- Dr Tracy Finch - assistive technologies and cognitive behavioural therapy-based intervention to reduce fear of falling in older people
- Dr Katie Haighton - alcohol use in later life and welfare rights advice for socio-economically disadvantaged older people
- Professor Eileen Kaner - alcohol use in older people. Excessive drinking is known to be harmful to health but, in moderation, can also be beneficial to health, so the picture is complex
- Dr Suzanne Moffatt - health and well-being of older people and tackling poverty and social exclusion in later life. Also tackling health and social inequalities and applying research to policy and practice
- Dr Richard McNally’s - lifecourse epidemiology of chronic diseases. Work on ageing includes evaluation of treatment outcomes for people aged over 60 with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
- Dr Dorothy Newbury-Birch - alcohol research across the age spectrum. Interventions designed to examine alcohol use and monitor alcohol intake and how alcohol affects the use of NHS services and on criminality
- Dr Mark Pearce - health, lifestyle and socio-economic status to inform what factors across the life-course are influential in determining a wide range of health and behaviours in later life
- Ms Marie Poole - exploring the experiences of people with dementia and their carers in relation to health care and services accessed
- Dr Justin Presseau - testing the effectiveness of behavior change techniques based on self-regulation theory (goal setting and self-monitoring) for promoting walking in healthy adult volunteers including the old
- Professor Louise Robinson - how community-based services can better work together in dementia care and also in developing training for GPs and other NHS staff to create a more skilled and caring workforce
- Dr Falko Sniehotta - developing and testing the theory of behaviour change and interventions to change behaviours relevant to health and health care such as engaging in exercise for sedentary older women
- Dr Blossom Stephan - integrating risk factor research across multiple disciplines (e.g., genetics, metabolic, nutrition, cardiovascular, cognition and lifestyle) to identify not only those individuals at risk of cognitive decline and dementia, but to determine how different risk and protective factors interact to promote health in older age
- Professor Richard Thomson - risk communication and shared decision making, much of which is undertaken with clinical settings and patient groups that include, or are almost exclusively, old people. Also work on stroke and treatment and care across all ages including the oldest old.
- Professor Martin White - development and evaluation of public health interventions and understanding and tackling inequalities in health. Also development and assessment of services for hyperacute stroke.
