Age Friendly Trinity
Long Room Hub
26th September 2017
Minister, Distinguished Guests,
Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the Trinity Long Room Hub for the launch of Age Friendly Trinity.
With this launch Trinity formally joins the international network of Age Friendly Universities and commits to the ten principles which unite its members. These principles encompass public engagement, dialogue, education, lifelong learning, and the university’s research agenda.
The Age-Friendly University network is a global initiative which was instigated here in Dublin in DCU, and we are delighted to have with us this morning the President of DCU, Professor Brian MacCraith, who will address you shortly.
This is a wonderful initiative and it’s one which Trinity fully supports. Ageing is one of the most important of our thematic research themes. Just over a decade ago, in 2006, we established The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, TILDA - a ground-breaking multidisciplinary study, which has made Trinity and Ireland a first port of call for researchers round the world seeking information on ageing.
The Intellectual Disability Supplement to TILDA – IDS-TILDA – was launched soon after, and last week it celebrated its tenth anniversary with the launch of the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability, which is the first dedicated Centre worldwide to investigate key issues in ageing, intellectual disability and the life course.
And last year we celebrated the donation from Atlantic Philanthropies to establish the Global Brain Health Institute as a joint initiative between Trinity and the University of California, San Francisco.
The Global Brain Health Institute will help to tackle the looming dementia epidemic and to improve care worldwide. It aims to train global leaders in brain health by the rapid translation of research in neuroscience and ageing into policy.
All these initiatives – TILDA, the Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability, the Global Brain Health Institute – go across the university, engaging multiple researchers, including from epidemiology, geriatric medicine, demography, social policy, psychology, economics, statistics and nursing.
They impact our educational programmes. We are delighted that since launching in 2016 our Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC - “Strategies for Successful Ageing” – has been accessed by more than 30,000 learners from over 100 countries, the majority of them over 56 years of age.
And our initiatives in Ageing are intrinsic to our mission in public engagement – to be engaged, locally, nationally and internationally, with key policy initiatives.
This is why we are so delighted to join the Age Friendly University Network, because it takes a similarly broad and inclusive and engaged approach to Ageing.
If a university does great research into ageing, but doesn’t open its educational programmes to older adults; or if a university is supportive of its own retired community but doesn’t involve older adults in its arts, cultural, health and wellbeing activities, nor open a dialogue with older communities – then the university is missing an opportunity. Instead of flow and energy between all its goals and actions, there is stoppage and incoherence.
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The Ten Principles of Age Friendly Universities go across a University’s mission in education, research, innovation and public engagement. By adhering to these ten principles, a university ensures that it is truly serving the older community and genuinely orienting its programmes to intergenerational and lifelong learning.
I congratulate Professor MacCraith and DCU for instigating this initiative which has proved so important and so popular.
I’d like to thank Professor Des O’Neill who first proposed to the Equality Committee that Trinity adopt these Principles. And I thank the Age-Friendly Trinity Working Group which has enabled Trinity to join the Network, including surveying a wide range of stakeholders across the university about their ongoing actions which support the ten principles. My thanks to the chair of the Group, Professor Sabina Brennan, and to all the members.
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I look forward to Trinity continuing to promote positive ageing in Irish and global society; and I look forward to sharing our experience and achievements in this area with other members of the Age Friendly University Network.
Thank you.
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