Health & well being

One of the great advances of the last century is that nearly all of us will live longer and with less disability than recent generations, Des O'Neill writes in the Irish Times.

For many community groups trying to provide services for older people, the barrier to achieving funding is the the process itself. This is where Age NI’s Comic Relief supported project Steps To Funding comes in. Through the project, Age NI runs funding workshops for local groups, supporting them to access financial support for activities that improve the lives of older people in their communities.

Institute of Public Health in Ireland will host its 4th Open Conference in Croke Park, Dublin, on Tuesday 13 October 2015. It recently launched a 2nd call for registration and submissions. The deadline for proposals for presentations is Friday 14 August 2015.

The aim of the Conference is to provide an open platform to:

The experience of older people with the nursing home system over the past few decades provides a new idiom for an easy mark, consultant geriatrician, Dr Des O’Neill writes in the Irish Times. “As easy as taking money from frail older people and their families” may not trip off the tongue as smoothly, but it neatly catches their experience at the hands of State agencies and the lack of public outrage.

The Department of Health (ROI) Review of the Nursing Homes Support Scheme was published by today, Monday 20 July 2015. The review is available on the Department’s website here.

The Review was carried out by the Department in collaboration with the Health Service Executive with input from Deloitte and Touche as external consultants.

Specific recommendations are to:

The EU-funded ATHLOS Project aims to achieve a better understanding of ageing by identifying patterns of healthy ageing trajectories, the determinants of those patterns, the critical points in time when changes in trajectories are produced, and to propose timely clinical and public health interventions to optimise healthy ageing. Experts from the areas of demography, sociology, clinical medicine, epidemiology and public health, health statistics, economics, data management, and policy will be involved in this research.

Two thirds of individuals 65 and older who screened positive for cognitive impairment refused subsequent evaluation according to the first study of its kind to examine older adults' willingness to undergo diagnostic assessment. The Indiana University Center for Aging Research, Regenstrief Institute and Eskenazi Health study of approximately 500 older adults found that individuals living alone were the least likely to agree to diagnostic assessment following a positive screening test for dementia.