Professor Pat Thane, Leverhulme Professor of Contemporary British History at the Institute of Histrical Research, joined the RED team for lunch today and provided some great food for thought on the ageing project.

Pat highlighted the need for segmentation of the ageing the population by need rather than age. Older people are not a single definable group but diverse in their fitness, wealth, class, ethnicity, gregariousness and so on. People also live to old age in widely different states of health. It raises interesting questions about the relationship between childhood development and development stages in later life - particularly the differences in progressive models of stage development seen amongst a population.

And what of the life expectancy gap between the genders? What makes women so much longer-lived than men? Is is a function genetic predisposition, or more related to stress levels, or perhaps a variance in social capital over the course of their lives, and particularly in older age?

Another point Pat made is that ageing is often not about age per se and often greatly influenced by the expectations the community and carers have of older people in terms of their frailty and need for care. The more people around you expect you to need help, for instance, the more you might be encouraged into a state of helplessness. Pat says that the longer people retain their independence and autonomy the longer their physical and mental deterioration seems to be postponed.

At this stage in our ageing work we are looking at 2 questions:
How to ensure a longer 3rd age?
How to help people approach and prepare for death in a better way?
It is early days and we are seeking to narrow our focus and identify the real opportunities for design in this context.

Thanks to Helen McCarthy and Pat Thane for their valuable insights so far.

CATEGORY: AGEING