Skip to main content

Bournemouth University

BU Research Blog

Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University

  • Home
  • RDS Team
    • Faculty-Facing Staff
    • Funding Development Team
    • Project Delivery and Research Governance Teams
    • Research Excellence Team
  • Clinical Governance @ BU
  • Research Ethics @ BU
  • REF 2028
    • BU REF 2021 Code of Practice
    • Declaration of Staff Circumstances
    • BU’s Unit of Assessment Teams
    • REF FAQs
    • Archive – REF 2014
      • BU REF 2014 Code of Practice
      • REF 2014 Frequently Asked Questions
        • REF 2014 Overview
        • Staff eligibility
        • Mock REF 2014 (REF preparation) exercises at BU
        • REF 2014 Assessment of outputs
        • REF 2014 Staff selection
        • REF 2014 Equality and diversity
  • Impact
    • Partnerships & collaborations
    • Working with businesses
      • Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF)
    • Communicating your research
    • Influencing policy makers
    • Public engagement
      • Quick guide to public engagement
    • Student engagement
      • Stages of engagement
      • Case study: Sean Beer
      • Case study: James Gavin
      • Case study: Anna Feigenbaum
  • Research Toolkit
  • Research Lifecycle
  • Policy
  • PGR
    • The Doctoral College Team

November 1, 2019

Ageing: Science, Technology and Healthy Living – BU academics submit written evidence to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee

BU research, BU2025, Fusion, Public engagement, Research communication, Research news mfancy

Background call for evidence:

Life span has increased over recent decades, but health span, the period of time people live in good health, has generally not kept pace, and so older people are living longer with ill health. This increased duration of ill health, both physical and psychological, and often compounded by loneliness, can be challenging for individuals; and the increasing number of people affected is placing pressure on health services and social care, threatening to overwhelm the funding mechanisms, and failing those in need.

Increasing health span has been adopted as a policy objective by the UK Government in the Industrial Strategy’s “Ageing Society” Grand Challenge, which aims to ensure that people can enjoy at least five extra healthy, independent years of life by 2035. This House of Lords inquiry will seek to determine whether the Government’s ambition to increase health span is achievable in principle, and which approaches may be most successful in practice.

Interdisciplinary research is at the heart of our BU2025 strategic plan, and moving into a new role can offer opportunities to work with others. The call for from the House of Lords Science and Technology Healthy Ageing Committee enabled me to partner with a new colleague, and for us to both think about our disciplines in different ways. Taking the ideas we discussed for submitting written evidence, we are now in the process of applying to a charity for a funded PhD student to take the work forward.

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/science-and-technology-committee/news-parliament-2017/ageing-inquiry-launch/Submissions

BU policy team

Interdisciplinary written submissions to the Committee kept our BU policy advisors, Jane Forster and Sarah Carter busy!  BU researchers Katherine Appleton, Samuel Nyman, Debbie Holley and Vanessa Heaslip all submitted evidence.

Dr Samuel Nyman, Department of Medical Sciences and Public Health,

A multidisciplinary approach to promote physical activity and exercise among older people

Dr Samuel Nyman is a leading researcher on preventing falls and promoting physical activity among older people. With a background in health psychology, his interests include the use of behaviour change techniques to promote exercise among older people and people with dementia. Dr Nyman was consulted for his expertise by Haringey Council in October 2016, for his input into the council’s Physical Activity for Older People Scrutiny Review. This directly led to recommendations that were agreed by the council.

This evidence is submitted in response to the government’s call, so that policy makers are aware of the need for a multidisciplinary perspective for promoting physical activity and preventing falls. This will include the use of psychological knowledge on behaviour change but also the expertise of others including urban planners to make environments more conducive for physical activity among older people.

His evidence can be read here:

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/science-and-technology-committee-lords/ageing-science-technology-and-healthy-living/written/105570.html

Professor Katherine Appleton

Professor Katherine Appleton is a Chartered Psychologist and Registered Nutritionist. She has researched human eating behaviour since 1998, with a special interest in the older population since 2006. Much of her research focuses on the optimisation of human health and well-bring in the normal population considering nutrition, physical activity and their impact on behaviour.

Her evidence can be read here:

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/science-and-technology-committee-lords/ageing-science-technology-and-healthy-living/written/105598.html

Professor Debbie Holley and Associate Professor Vanessa Heaslip

In our submission, we reflected on the role of technology in healthy ageing, and suggested some ‘tech’ futures areas for consideration.

Executive Summary

Technologies to provide a solution for loneliness (e.g. the virtual tea party) and virtual health care can provide efficiencies for the NHS as well as improved access for marginalised communities. However, key barriers are the spread and access to technology (especially rural communities) the skill set (and costs) necessary for the ageing population to engage with this technology, alongside the upskilling of the current NHS workforce to work virtually need careful consideration. Some barriers can be directly addressed by Government 5G and NHS workforce priorities; there is a clear role for charities; other barriers will need universities and industry to work together to engage with agile and rapid prototyping and testing. The methods of procurement need to be revisited, currently excellent SMEs are filtered out – working across with the Department of Business could provide ways of supporting innovation. Further work with experts is needed to invest in effective scaling solutions across the sector, and learning from examples/solutions/suggestions are contained in the text below. More of the same is not going enable the huge changes that demographic pressures are bringing to bear on an already stretched NHS; and work of effective data capture is needed to identify and bring the policy makers lens onto those belonging to marginalised groups.

The link to our full evidence submission here:

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/science-and-technology-committee-lords/ageing-science-technology-and-healthy-living/written/105617.html​

 

Tags: Ageing Digital Health technology

Related Posts

  • Dr Rafaelle Nicholson’s Expertise Features in House of Lords Select Committee ReportDecember 13, 2021
  • Higher Education and Research Bill in the House of Lords – round up before the committee stageJanuary 6, 2017
  • Written Submission to UK Parliament’s Defence Sub-Committee by Sascha Dov Bachmann on Russian Law fare Capabilities As A Threat To The ArcticApril 3, 2017
  • Research transparency – HRA response to the Science and Technology CommitteeFebruary 22, 2019

BU staff can login below:

Other services

Don’t miss a post!

Subscribe for the BU Research Digest, delivered freshly every day.


 

Recent posts

BU research Funding opportunities EU
  • A cartoon image of black and white hands clapping on a yellow background New blog series: The Month in Research – celebrating our successesOctober 2, 2023
  • Recruiting: FST Rep for the Research Staff Association (RSA)October 2, 2023
  • BA Small grants- submit your ITBs!September 29, 2023
  • Call for abstracts | The 15th Annual Postgraduate Research ConferenceSeptember 28, 2023
  • Conversation article: Online safety bill – why making the UK the ‘safest place to go online’ is not as easy as the government claimsSeptember 28, 2023
  • An aerial shot showing the Lansdowne district of Bournemouth Results of the third Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) published, recognising BU’s contribution to societySeptember 28, 2023
  • RDS Pre-Award Drop-In Sessions (Funding Briefings)September 26, 2023
  • Wellcome trust ECR awardSeptember 10, 2023
  • Time for Something New?September 7, 2023
  • British Academy Small Grants WorkshopSeptember 1, 2023
  • Development fund from the British Academy ECRNAugust 2, 2023
  • BA Seed funding call NOW OPENAugust 2, 2023
  • BU policy update for the w/e 22nd September 2023September 21, 2023
  • HE policy update – summer catch up September 2023September 18, 2023
  • Association to Horizon Europe – Agreement in Principle ReachedSeptember 7, 2023
  • Webinar – ERC grants 2024September 5, 2023
  • BU FoodMAPP reseachers host partner secondment from Institut Lyfe, LyonAugust 14, 2023
  • Two papers based on ERASMUS+ exchangeAugust 8, 2023

Search by Category

Search by popular post topics

AHRC Brexit BRIAN BU research clinical research CMMPH collaboration collaborative research conference congratulations Dr. Pramod Regmi Edwin-blog-post ESRC EU event Events funding funding opportunities Fusion Fusion Investment Fund Health horizon 2020 HSC impact innovation knowledge exchange media midwifery Nepal nhs NIHR open access Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen publication public engagement publishing ref research Research Councils research professional RKE development framework RKEDF social sciences training widening participation

RSS Research Information Network

  • Physical Sciences Case studies: information use and discovery
  • Information handling in collaborative research: an exploration of five case studies
  • Information literacy monitoring and evaluation
  • Data centres: their use, value and impact
  • Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications

RSS UKRI

Browse all our categories
  • Awarded & submitted bids
  • BRIAN
  • BU Challenges
  • BU research
  • BU2025
  • Business Engagement
  • Centre for Excellence in Learning
  • Clinical Governance
  • Coffee Morning
  • conferences
  • COVID-19
  • data management
  • Delicious links
  • Doctoral College
  • ECR Network
  • EPSRC
  • ESRC
  • EU
  • Events
  • Featured
  • Featured academics
  • Festival of Learning
  • Friday profile
  • Funding opportunities
  • Fusion
  • Fusion Investment Fund
  • Fusion themes
  • Global engagement
  • Grants Academy
  • Guidance
  • hate crime
  • HE-BCI
  • HEIF
  • HSS Our 9 Research Entities
  • humanities
  • Impact
  • Industry collaboration
  • Info Days
  • innovation
  • international
  • Knowledge Exchange
  • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
  • Knowledge Transfer
  • Knowledge Transfer Partnership
  • mrc
  • News from the PVC
  • nhs
  • NHS
  • open accecss
  • open access
  • parliament
  • Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
  • PG research
  • policy
  • Post-award
  • Postgraduate Research
  • pre-award
  • Public engagement
  • Publishing
  • R & KE Operations
  • REF Subjects
  • Research assessment
  • Research Centres
  • Research communication
  • Research Concordat
  • Research Ethics
  • Research Ethics Panels
  • research governance
  • Research Integritiy
  • research integrity
  • research methods
  • Research news
  • research opportunities
  • research staff
  • Research Supervision
  • Research themes
  • Research Training
  • RKE development framework
  • staff profile pages
  • Strategic Investment Areas
  • Student Engagement
  • student research
  • the conversation
  • Training
  • UKRI
  • Uncategorized
  • Vitae
  • Women's Academic Network
  • writing
  • Twitter

© Bournemouth University 2023. All rights reserved.

  • Charitable status
  • Website privacy & cookies
  • Copyright and terms of use