National Collaboration on Ageing launched

When four of the research councils that fund the UK's university-based research announced their backing this week for a national collaboration on ageing (NCAR), they and the new collaboration soon found themselves afloat in the treacherous waters of policy and politics. NCAR has no direct control over research funding, but it will work with the research councils — the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) — to promote interdisciplinary research in an effort to overcome what many working in the area call the fragmented nature of studies into ageing and its consequences. Traditionally, it is not easy to get funding for interdisciplinary research. "A lot will depend on how the idea is implemented," said Jeanette Lilley, a psychologist from the University of Nottingham, "research is currently falling between the cracks [of funding from research councils]. It will help if there is a strategy."The collaboration's additional aims include identifying ways to rapidly implement research findings both into national policies and into practical terms, such as incorporation into building standards. Networking, a web site, workshops and cross research-council meetings are the methods that NCAR's small secretariat currently has at its disposal to implement its aims. But NCAR's and the research councils' declaration of intent was not enough for a number of delegates at the conference in Birmingham where the Collaboration was announced. Repeatedly, health care professionals queried how NCAR would implement the findings of its research, and pointed out that the elderly have little access to political power and resources. As one delegate told BMC, "We are interested in what happens in the nursing home, not the laboratory." This view emphasizes an on-going concern in the UK that research into ageing is slow to be translated into practice. The point was made explicitly in a report entitled "Extended Quality of Life" published by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology in January 2001. Though the establishment of NCAR is not a direct response to the criticism in the Select Committee's report, said Alan Walker — director of NCAR and Professor of Social Gerontology at the University of Sheffield — the collaboration does want to bridge the gap between laboratory and nursing home, and to identify the research issues that would benefit from the concerted efforts of different disciplines. The task is likely to be difficult. For many reasons connected with the practice of research, the organisation of institutions and the nature of people, interdisciplinary research is notoriously difficult. "Even to bring researchers together within one institution, with a strong steer and the highest level of support from the institution is difficult," said Walker, "We will need good role models, but they are few and far between."A measure of just how difficult the task is that NCAR faces is apparent in the breadth of backgrounds of the attendees, who ranged from sociologists, to clinical psychologists to cell biologists. Yet despite the difficulties obvious to anyone attending the meeting, there were glimmers of what might be achieved. At one of the workshops attended by BMC, the clinician leading the discussion, a molecular geneticist and psychologists agreed — from quite different perspectives — that dementia was a topic that could be a focus for interdisciplinary research. All argued also that in the light of emerging knowledge the line between normal and pathological changes in cognition with ageing were unclear (something that seemed obvious to them, but is not necessarily widely appreciated).Despite some progress delegates did not seem any clearer than at the beginning about how NCAR would work in practice, but Walker is not discouraged. "I've participated in many efforts at all levels to establish policy for new endeavours and I am not surprised by how Monday [12 November 2001] developed," he said.Walker hopes that future, more focused workshops will reveal more areas where interdisciplinary research will benefit from different perspectives and that the act of drawing together practitioners and basic researchers will be the bridge between lab and nursing home.Certainly an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of ageing seems to be an idea that is coming into its own. France, for example, has established an Institute of Longevity Studies. Canada set up an Institute of Ageing last year.Aware of this trend and of the fact that there is no single meeting that all researchers in the field of ageing attend nor one obvious journal for all researchers in the field, Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) launched SAGEKE (KE for knowledge environment), a website dedicated to ageing research. Publisher, Ellis Rubinstein (also the editor of Science) told delegates in Birmingham that intelligent software scans the abstracts of a broad range of literature that publishes ageing related research, putting the references in a single database. The site, which offers a number of other research aids, was established with a grant for $5 million over three years from the Ellison Medical Foundation, and is available free for the next year. Whether access remains free depends on future funding sources, said Rubinstein.But, Science is keen to establish international links with institutions undertaking ageing-related research and wants laboratory heads from collaborating institutions to nominate post docs who might dedicate five hours a week to contributing in some way to SAGEKE. Some 35 labs in the US are already committed to the project, a number which Rubinstein wants to see increase to roughly 100 in the US alone. All in all, it seems that a more positive and vibrant ambience now surrounds research into issues affecting the elderly. As Dawn Brooker — a clinical psychologist from the University of Bradford — one of the participants at the launch of NCAR told BMC, "I've been saying much the same things [about the needs for research for the elderly] for 20 years, I just get invited to say it now at more prestigious events."

National Collaboration on Ageing launched

A conference in Birmingham, UK sets out a model of how disparate agencies can be brought together to focus their efforts more efficiently.

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