How fighting ageism helps build healthy communities

Key takeaways:

• A new review, the largest of its kind, has revealed injurious impacts of ageism on both physical and mental health.
• While many innovative solutions exist, government-backed action is fairly rare.
• Exceptions include the province of Quebec, in Canada, and a whole-country approach in Ireland.

Every Friday afternoon throughout the year, More than 450,000 people around the world receive a new notification: the PastaGrannies have uploaded a video.

Launched five years ago, PastaGrannies is an initiative from the cross-European Invisible Talents program which aims to promote the community participation of men and women over 80 and make visible their talents, experiences and contributions.

The concept is simple: real Italian grannies, or nonne, are filmed teaching viewers how to make the traditional Italian pasta dishes they have perfected over their long lifetimes.

Beneath the fun exterior though, there is an important context. “Negative attitudes and prejudices cause human rights violations in older age,” explains Anita Rappauer, a researcher at Austria-based Queraum, one of the partners responsible for delivering the Invisible Talents program.

“The views and voices of older people are ignored and often it is assumed that older persons can no longer make decisions for themselves,” she continues. “Older people who feel they are a burden perceive their lives to be less valuable, putting them at risk of depression and social isolation.”

Consequences of ageism

Rappauer's analysis has recently been underpinned by the largest ever examination of the health consequences of ageism. Led by Professor Becca Levy of Yale University, a research team systematically reviewed 422 studies from around the world and found evidence of the negative impacts of ageism on older people in 96% of them.

“I was surprised by the prevalence of the injurious impact of ageism on older persons' health,” said Professor Levy. “We found ageism affected older persons regardless of their age, sex, and racial/ethnic membership.”

Indeed, the research found evidence that age-based bias can be linked to a number of physical and mental health problems, as well as shorter life expectancy. Ageism was also found to impact on access to healthcare, with evidence of denied access found in 85% of studies.

The lessons for policymakers are clear. “The injurious reach of ageism that our team documented demonstrates the need for policy initiatives to overcome ageism,” says Professor Levy. “These initiatives might include drafting new laws to combat ageism, and new efforts to enforce existing laws designed to protect the rights of older persons to receive equal access to needed healthcare, food and housing.”

The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the Yale research as part of its Global Campaign to Combat Ageism, is working hard to spread these lessons and share good practice from around the world. The organisation’s "Global Database of Age-friendly Practices" boasts hundreds of entries ranging from direct actions against age-based bias to a variety of innovations designed to empower, stimulate and connect older people across the world.

Government action

Yet many initiatives, like the Invisible Talents program are run by third and public sector organisations rather than at government level: the University of Third Age, for example, is an international movement which aims to educate and stimulate retirees around the world, and which reaches hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. But there is no centralised headquarters and many iterations around the world operate as small-scale charities with limited resources.

One exception is the Canadian province of Quebec, which boasts both one of the world’s highest life expectancies and Canada’s first government policy on ageing.

The province boasts an action plan entitled “A Quebec for All Ages”, which provides investments of CA$12.3 billion by 2023 and includes the collaboration of 20 ministries and public agencies. The plan covers areas as broad as social, civic and professional engagement, intergenerational activity, home care, housing, transport, safety and access to government information.

And at a national level, December 2019 saw Ireland become the world’s first “Age-Friendly Country”, named as such because all local administrations are members of the World Health Organisation’s Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities and have their own age-friendly strategies which comprise actions on areas such as health, housing, social care and safety.

Tying together government initiatives like that in Ireland and Quebec, as well as extra-governmental responses such as Invisible Talents, is a commitment to hearing and acting upon the voices of older people at all levels of design and delivery. In Ireland, the establishment of an Older Persons Forum, engAGE Kildare, has been recognised internationally as an example of best practice, with participants making their voices heard at all levels of government and on issues as diverse as health, inclusion and advocacy.

And Anita Rappauer’s team at Queraum were also involved in the successful “Mobility Scouts” program which sees older people in the Netherlands, Lithuania, Austria, Germany and Italy take a key role in the co-design and production of services spanning the likes of transport, democracy and city planning. “The core idea,” she explains, “is that older people are experts of their own lives and know best how services and public spaces should be designed and organised to meet their needs.”

For the older people who benefit from these initiatives, the results are manifold. Citizens themselves, whether Pasta Grannies, members of EngAGE Kildare, or those participating in other age-friendly initiatives across the globe, feel stimulated, valued and well-connected at an individual level. The knock-on effect, suggests Professor Levy’s research, is structural, with improved access to rights such as health and housing.

As one 83 year old student at the University of Third Age in Kaunus, Lithuania, puts it: “to participate means to feel alive, to experience to feel needed, to experience the meaning of life.” — Eve Livingston

Further reading

Harmful effects of ageism on older persons’ health found in 45 countries — Yale News

Global database of age-friendly practices — WHO

(Picture credit: Unsplash)