ERC Advanced Grant Funding for Professor Taina Rantanen

2.04 M€ for aging research to the University of Jyväskylä

Active ageing: beyond the same old story. ERC Advanced Grant Funding of 2.04 Million €  over 5 years.

All too often, policy makers consider active ageing as disability prevention and a way to save on health and social care budgets. Such approach represents older people as a burden for society thus raising the risk of discrimination and so-called “ageism”. But what if we looked at active ageing from a completely different angle?

Professor Taina Rantanen, from Gerontology Research Centre at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, sees active ageing as interplay between ability, activity, ambition and autonomy. By assessing these dimensions and examining factors such as physical and psychological health, resilience, personal skills and environmental support, Professor Rantanen will introduce active ageing as a quantifiable concept – the AGNES scale – for the first time in gerontology. This approach will allow her to develop an effective active ageing intervention, based on counselling, IT resources and volunteers’ support. The AGNES scale will also provide evidence to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed action.

https://erc.europa.eu/press_release/erc-advanced-grant-2015-project-examples#AGNES

• Researcher: Taina Rantanen

• Host Institution: University of Jyväskylä (Finland)

• Project: Active ageing – Resilience and external support as modifiers of the disablement outcome (AGNES)

• ERC Funding: €2.04 million over 5 years