New Partnerships for the EASYCare Health
There has been a tremendous acceleration of partnership working in the EASYCare Project in the last three months in sectors as diverse as finance, communications, marketing, advocacy, research and development, technology, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, professional nursing and home care.
Finance, communications, marketing and advocacy I am particularly grateful to Dawid Konotey-Ahulu (Partnership for Change), for connecting me to his amazing network of leaders in finance, policy, communications and marketing to help create common purpose in creating a better world for older people. I have had really powerful discussions with Anne-Marie Carton, Ian Spero, Trevor Llanwarne and Tina Woods from Dawid’s network and have learnt the delights of “Slack” for on-line communication. I am looking forward to connecting to others in Dawid’s network and to Dawid joining us soon in Solihull for a meeting with our EASYCare Health team.
Following great meetings with Baroness Sally Greengross and Sally-Marie Bamford of the International Longevity Centre UK, I am working closely with the ILC to help maximise the awareness and potential of the EASYCare Project for better policy and practice to meet older people’s needs.
Jane Barratt of the International Federation on Aging and I have kept in close contact since the great meeting in Brussels in November which Jane hosted to promote healthy ageing though uptake of vaccination. The EASYCare Project is a partner to the global coalition for promoting adult vaccination, which has been established since the meeting.
Research and Development I now have a base in Warwick Business School, working with Nicola Burgess, Graeme Currie and colleagues to mobilise expertise in the diffusion of innovation. My office is in the Operations Management Group. My first day was an OMG experience when I realised what talent was available. Our first pieces of work will be to document the history of the Project from a diffusion of innovation perspective, and to write a bid with Meredith Wise of Help Age Asia to the China Prosperity Fund for financial support to set up an EASYCare Health training franchise in China.
I am also working actively with Angelique Mavrodaris of Cambridge University Institute of Public Health in developing our research plans for EASYCare population studies. Our first task is to describe the frequency and patterns of needs identified as part of the EASYCare assessments and to develop a strategy for our work on population needs and impact assessment. This work will feed into a bid for the Institute for Public Health to become a centre for global population health and ageing studies, under the leadership of its Director, Professor Carol Brayne.
Our Bridlington demonstration project is going really well, using a call centre approach, with colleagues at Hull-York Medical School involved in the evaluation and bidding for a major research grant to evaluate impact in the next phase of rolling of the project. Osaretin Oviasu of the School is involved in this work and in the derivation of a well-being score from EASYCare data.
Our international EASYCare Network remain active with new studies underway and important papers recently accepted for publication form Turkey, Iran and Portugal on the validation of the EASYCare assessments. In August 2015 we crafted a strategy for next phase implementation based in key regions and countries: China, India, South-East Asia, East Africa, Middle East (Turkey and Iran), UK, Europe and Latin America. I am delighted to report that that I have had feedback from colleagues from the network in the last couple of days which shows that we are on track with our plans in all these parts of the world. Major projects are underway and, at the kind invitation of my colleague and friend, Fernando Morales Martinez, a key regional meeting for implementing the EASYCare approach in Latin America will be held in Costa Rica in April 2016, with input from Public Health and Older People’s leaders form Brazil, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Locally in Solihull we have piloted a new approach to care navigation supported by an EASYCare assessment in high risk older people and we are planning a demonstration project across the West Midlands of the EASYCare approach to support working across the sectors.
Technology: our demonstration project in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, UK, has shown the potential for a call centre approach to assessment. In partnership with Lee Hampston and his colleagues at KC Communications we have developed an app and data base to manage individual and population needs across sectors. We will be working with KC Communications to offer this expertise to the whole EASYCare Network.
Pharmaceuticals, Nutrition, Professional Nursing and Home Care On 8/9th February will are holding a joint workshop of the EASYCare Project, members of the Global Coalition on Aging and the International Council of Nursing, to build effective partnerships across these sectors to promote healthy ageing. During the meeting we will also discuss our work on a European Commission funded project on caring for older people (LYNC), and we will develop plans for a sponsored symposium on promoting healthy ageing at the World Congress on Aging in San Francisco in July 2017.
Finally I would like to thank Peter Nicholson and Janusz Czernielewski of Galderma, without whose financial support this year many of these developments would not have been possible. Peter and Janusz will be in Geneva, from where my next blog (with some photos) will be posted.
