Author: leydenacademy

The support of caregivers, both professionals and family members, is vital to the health, independence and well-being of older people around the globe. How can we help them in performing their important, challenging role? Startup EasyCare Academy develops courses, assessments and tools to support caregivers worldwide.

We are delighted to announce the collaboration between EasyCare Academy and Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, the latter delivering expert consultancy. The first EasyCare Academy course, the Basis of Caregiving, will be available in January 2018. Additional courses for caregivers will be developed for both professionals in profit and non-profit organisations as well as for family members responding to the needs of older people.

Background of EasyCare Academy
Based on 28 years’ experience across more than 30 countries, EasyCare Academy is a social impact company focused on supporting personalized care for healthy ageing to enable people to live better as they live longer. EasyCare Academy’s digital platform, validated by more than 90 scientific, peer-reviewed publications assesses biologic, social, psychological and environmental domains to determine – at an individual level – care plans matched to local resources. Respond 4.0, EasyCare Academy’s standardized assessment is proven to enable the health, independence and well-being of older people while lowering the burden on healthcare budgets.

Learn more about what EasyCare Academy is about in this video: co-founder Ian Philps in an interview with Marieke van der Waal, director of Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing.

A long term collaboration
Both EasyCare Academy and Leyden Academy share the same mission, to improve the quality of life of older people, and have expressed the ambition for a long term collaboration. The following Leyden Academy staff members will deliver expertise, advise and consultancy in the first phase:

• prof. dr. Joris Slaets, professor of geriatric medicine and director of Leyden Academy, regarding the quality of subject matter content;
• Marie-Louise Kok, digital learning specialist, on digital learning guidelines and the development of a learning platform.

For more information on the programme, please visit the EasyCare Academy website. You can sign up here as well.

 

This morning, we welcomed a delegation of 13 Finnish staff nurses, physiotherapists and social workers at Leyden Academy. Alongside their work, these healthcare professionals are all master students in Active Ageing at Karelia University of Applied Sciences in Joensuu, Finland. This week, they visit The Netherlands to obtain a broad view of how elderly care is organised in another European country, after their visit to Greece in 2016.

Marieke van der Waal, director of Leyden Academy, presented the master students with an overview of the current research and projects of our institute. Scientific staff member David van Bodegom then shared the latest insights in vital and healthy ageing, and invited the group to experience what it feels like to be older in the ‘ageing suit’. The study trip also includes visits to rehabilitation hotel Topaz Revitel and the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), who have an innovative collaboration in the field of geriatric rehabilitation, care organisation Florence in The Hague and a location of small-scale nursing home De Herbergier.

The Hague, the first city in the Netherlands to join the WHO Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities, will be hosting the International Age-friendly Cities Conference on innovation, health and active ageing from 2-4 October 2017.

This conference provides the opportunity to share ideas and experiences related to age-friendly cities and innovations in healthcare with participants from all around the world. Main themes are diversity, participation, accessibility, ageing, vitality and ICT, and will be addressed by several keynote speakers and in a number of workshops.

On Tuesday 3rd of October Joris Slaets  will contribute to the workshop on vitality. In order to improve quality of life and to add better health to longer lives, it is essential to work on the vitality of older people. How to improve vitality and mobility of older people will be the focus of this workshop.

Click here for more information and/or to register.

Each year, alternatingly the portrait of a vital older man or woman is chosen to represent our institute on communication outings (e.g. for website, brochures, banners etc.). For this year, from 11-11-2017 through 11-11-2018, we are looking for a man (from 75 years or older) who radiates a lust for life.

Procedure

• Photos can be submitted up to Monday 25 September 2017 to Yvonne Schinkel-Koemans at koemans@leydenacademy.nl.
• Several photos of multiple persons may be submitted.
• The management and communication department at Leyden Academy will select the ‘winning’ portrait.
• The picture is royalty-free and will be used exclusively by Leyden Academy.

What is important to 55+ citizens? What are their desires and ambitions? How can you better focus on their quality of life and engage older clients and customers in the development of new products and services? These questions are at the heart of the new course (Re)discover Seniors, that will take place in Leiden, The Netherlands on Tuesday 31 October and Wednesday 1 November 2017. The course is presented both in English and in Dutch and is part of the EIT Health Campus program. The course programme is based on the successful pilot ‘Wellbeing of Seniors’ in 2016.

Creating value for older individuals
The course is developed for professionals in both for-profit and non-profit organisations, looking for ways to reorient their organisations toward the growing demographic group of older adults. In 2050, almost one in three citizens in higher income countries will be over 60 years old. But the (re)discovery of older clients and customers is not just about marketing, says Joris Slaets, professor of geriatric medicine and director of Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing: “Knowing what matters to older citizens is crucial: what do they find most important in their lives, what are their desires, goals and values? Only then can we develop the innovative products and services that create value for older individuals and for our communities.”

Self-paced learning
(Re)discover Seniors is a blended course: after two days of lectures and workshops in Leiden, participants will join a self-paced programme on the online learning platform. The acquired knowledge and expertise can be applied in writing a business plan or future perspective, supported by expert coaches.

For more information on the programme, the instructors and practical details, please visit the course website. You can sign up here as well.

Today, for the fourth consecutive year, Leyden Academy welcomed twenty curious pre-medical students from Union College in New York. The students are currently touring the US, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands for an impression of how health care is structured in the various countries. In our country, the tour included visits to hospitals, a health centre, a centre specialising in physical and mental disabilities and even a presentation about the Dutch drug policy system.

At Leyden Academy, we discussed various topics related to vitality and ageing. Scientific staff member Lex van Delden asked the students about their associations with old age, and challenged the general image of older people as helpless and miserable. Research shows that despite frailty and impairments, older people in the Netherlands perceive their own health as quite well (report Shades of Grey), and rate their quality of life an 8 out of 10 (Leiden 85-plus study). Lex also introduced the Life and Vitality Assessment, a new tool developed by Leyden Academy to help measure the wellbeing of older individuals.

We also discussed how we can prevent or postpone so-called ‘diseases of old age’ and live longer, healthier lives by making small changes in our daily routines and environment – the subject of the MOOC Healthy Ageing in Six Steps. Finally, students Vanesha and Julian (see picture) got to experience what it feels like to be old, by wearing the ‘ageing suit’. Including shaky hands, unsteady feet and limited eyesight due to glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy – depending on the glasses you choose. A true eye-opener…

Since 2011, financial services organization Aegon has carried out the annual Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey, the largest global retirement survey of its kind. The survey, conducted in cooperation with the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and Instituto de Longevidade Mongeral Aegon, covers over 15 countries and 16,000 employed and retired respondents. The 2017 edition is entitled Successful Retirement – Healthy Aging and Financial Security and investigates the two elements necessary to prepare for an enjoyable retirement: wealth and health.

Promoting healthy ageing and financial security
The survey, released in June 2017, confirms that the gap between people’s expectations for retirement and the reality remains stark. It also shows that health and wealth in retirement are closely linked. Respondents view retirement as an active stage of life in which they wish to stay socially connected, involved in their communities, and continue to work in some capacity. This requires both careful financial planning and the maintenance of good health, the report concludes. In a world in which one in five people can expect to live beyond their 90th birthday, individuals, employers, the retirement industry, and governments, all have a role to play in promoting healthy ageing and long-term financial security.

Best practice with Leyden Academy
The 2017 Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey contains a case study in cooperation with Leyden Academy, highlighting the book A Guide to Growing Older – Let Your Environment Do the Work by Dr. David van Bodegom and Professor Rudi Westendorp. It provides a recipe on how to grow old and remain healthy, not from sheer discipline alone but through smart adaptations to one’s daily surroundings; at home, at school, at the office and on the road. The best practice can be viewed here.

To download the 2017 Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey, please visit the Aegon website.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart started composing and performing at the age of five. The child prodigy did not grow old: he died aged 35. According to researchers of Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, Mozart’s case is not unique. In an article in scientific journal Aging, they conclude that composers and writers who published their first creative work at a younger age were shown to have substantially shorter lifespans.

Almost three years difference
The researchers analysed the life expectancy of 1.110 composers and 1.182 writers born between 1400 and 1915 and the age at which they published their first creative work, as mentioned in the Oxford Companion to Music and the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Writers and composers who published their first work at a young age, turned out to have lower lifespans compared to those who published their first work at a later age. The difference in life expectancy added up to 2.5 years for composers and 2.7 years for writers, adjusted for sex, nationality and date of birth. In the study, only individuals were included that had lived at least up to the age of forty and had finished a first work before the age of forty.

Earlier peak, accelerated pace of aging
Generally, the longer it takes an organism to reach maturity, the longer it lives. The publication of a first composition or novel can be considered an expression of intellectual maturity, suggesting an underlying maturity of the brain and central nervous system. Researcher David van Bodegom of Leyden Academy explains: “The variation in human lifespans is fascinating: every individual ages differently, both physically and mentally. In a previous study, we found that Olympic athletes that have early physical peaks live shorter than those who peak at later ages. We can now conclude that there is also an association between intellectual development and longevity. Underlying biological mechanisms that help an individual mature earlier in life intellectually, come with the price of an accelerated pace of aging.”

The article Intellectual maturity and longevity: late-blooming composers and writers live longer than child prodigies by Maurits P.J. Hafkamp, Joris P.J. Slaets and David van Bodegom was published in scientific journal Aging on 30 May 2017.

11-22 September 2017
Heidelberg, Germany

This Summer School is a two-week program that covers all the necessary steps and tools to create your own startup.

Before the Summer School begins, participants are trained through the MOOC ‘Healthy Ageing in 6 Steps’. On site in Heidelberg, teams of three-to-five participants work jointly to overcome challenges brought in by companies or yourself that cover prevention and treatment of chronic diseases with modern and active lifestyles. euVENTION generates actionable results while qualifying participants to use state of the art innovation methods (design thinking, rapid prototyping, business modelling) for future healthcare related endeavors. At the end of euVENTION, participants will have run through all phases of a real-world innovation project.

Background: This Summer School is an initiative within EIT Health’s euVENTION. The overall goal is to improve prevention and treatment options for middle-aged (50-70-year-old) people, threatened by or suffering from chronic diseases (diabetes, coronary heart diseases and psychological disorders).
Target group: Master, PhD and MD students with different backgrounds are welcome. Furthermore, dedicated and motivated individuals can apply. They form cross-functional teams, with at least one person with a life science/medical, one person with a business, and one person with a social science background.
Challenges: Challenges are questions or issues raised by companies or by young professionals and scholars for which they would want a solution that results in an innovation (product or service).
Scholarships: Participation is free of charge. For travel and accommodation costs, you can apply for scholarships. The final amount will be determined after the selection process has finished.
Location: Marsilius-Kolleg, Heidelberg University’s institutional hub for interdisciplinary collaboration
Deadline for applications: 15 June 2017
Contact person: Mr. Raoul Haschke, raoul.haschke@zuv.uni-heidelberg.de
More information, registration and/or bringing in challenges: http://www.euvention.eu/
Partners: Heidelberg University; Heidelberg University Hospital; Heidelberg Startup Partners e.V.; Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing; Maastricht University; and SAP

Life expectancy is rising fast and the end of this trend is not yet in sight. Many people wonder to what extent the years that we have gained are enjoyable, since our health deteriorates as we get older. However, research shows that older people are more satisfied with their lives than is often believed, even when they experience health issues. In his PhD dissertation ‘Maintaining life satisfaction at old age in the face of physical decline’, Thomas Puvill researches the drivers of life satisfaction at old age and searching for answers to questions like: which factors separate older people with a low from older people with a high life satisfaction? And how do older people maintain their high life satisfaction despite physical decline?

Thomas will defend his dissertation on Tuesday 6 June at 10:00 AM in the Academiegebouw, Rapenburg 67-73 in Leiden, The Netherlands. Supervisors are Professor Rudi Westendorp (Copenhagen University) and Professor Joris Slaets (Leyden Academy). The dissertation is free to the public, registration in advance is not necessary. For more information, please visit the Leiden University website.