Ageing

Ageing research at Trinity College Dublin aims to support dissemination and application, in imaginative ways, to stakeholders of the evidence that will allow us to meet the challenges associated with population ageing and to unlock the longevity dividend.

Research

Population ageing has a profound and pervasive effect on our global society. This ageing transformation poses formidable challenges: how to sustain an adequate standard of living and quality of life for older people, and to provide appropriate services and facilities such as healthcare and social care, while ensuring the effectiveness and financial sustainability of our systems and institutions. Countries throughout the world are realising that creative policy initiatives are needed to address this challenge. New policies require a greatly enhanced research base is required for the new policies to well designed and effective.

Benefits to Society

Trinity academics contribute to promoting research and teaching in ageing, to development of a comprehensive research agenda on ageing, and to broadening the interest of the College and wider community in ageing through public engagement.  They also play a role in relation to promoting awareness of ageing issues and maintaining relations with relevant external stakeholders.

Research at Trinity

Trinity EngAGE Centre for Research in Ageing provides formal leadership for the coordination of ageing research across disciplines, in collaboration with Trinity’s teaching hospitals, St James’s and Tallaght, and other Trinity and national and international research and non-governmental organisations.
At present 120 Trinity researchers are actively working on age-related research across all domains in a systematic way: The Mind, Body, Social Environment and Built Environment. Multi-disciplinary research is undertaken in the areas such as brain ageing, stroke and heart disease, population health, falls and syncope, mental health, end-of-life, elder abuse, healthcare services, technology innovations, smart cities, intergenerational transfers, pensions and financial security. It involves experts from the fields of biology, public health, medicine, informatics, macroeconomics, finance, urban planning, engineering, technologies, globalisation and migration, the law, sociology, business and philosophy.
Some of the challenges of population ageing that Trinity researchers are addressing include:

• The biology of ageing and frailty
• Steps that individuals and society can take to enhance healthy ageing, ranging from health behaviours to new technologies
• How best to ensure care and quality at the end of life
• Economic issues, including macroeconomic effects of ageing populations, income security and health care financing
• Retirement - when and how?
• Creating sustainable environments  

Research Champion

The research champion for this theme is Professor Roseanne Kenny.