Double Success at the Medical Research Council

Dr. Gill Windle of the Institute of Medical and Social Care Research (IMSCaR), Bangor University has been awarded a grant by the Medical Research Council for a network examining healthy ageing, focusing on the role of resilience across the life course. The grant, awarded under phase 2 of the Lifelong Health and Well-Being programme, will enable the Network to develop a comprehensive research proposal which will be submitted for further funding under phase 3 of the call next year.

The multi-disciplinary, cross sector network links together individuals - both academics and stakeholders - with an interest in exploring resilience in both younger and older people. From Bangor University, Professors Bob Woods (IMSCaR), Jo-Rycroft Malone & Jane Noyes (School of Healthcare Sciences) will join with others from Swansea University, the University of Liverpool, Imperial College London, University College London and the University of Essex.

“An important part of the network will be the contribution of stakeholders. Representatives from organisations such as Age Concern and Whizz Kidz, local policy makers and service users will ensure that the academic output is meaningful and is universally useful and understood by all sectors. This also enables stakeholder expertise in healthy ageing and policy to be extended into national and international research and translation”.

The network will enable discussion of all the different factors that might impact on resilience from early to advanced older age. These include the places people live, the support they receive, biological and psychological characteristics. It will address problems regarding definitions of resilience, and how it might be examined and promoted. It will develop a research, knowledge transfer and dissemination strategy and subsequent research bids that reflect a multi-disciplinary life course perspective to healthy ageing.

Dr. Windle also received a second success under this call, as a co-applicant on another network project led by Dr. Mima Cattan of Leeds Metropolitan University. This multi-disciplinary network aims to create a comprehensive, evidence based model of mental capital and mental well-being in later life.

The research development aims of both networks place Bangor University in key position to secure future funding from the MRC under the Lifelong Health and Well-Being Programme.