K Boyer

Insights and principles for supporting social engagement in rural older people

ABSTRACT Staying socially engaged is known to improve health and longevity in older people. As the population ages, maintaining levels of social engagement among older people becomes increasingly important. Nevertheless, advancing age brings with it many challenges to social engagement, especially in rural areas. A three-year Australian Research Council Linkage Project sought to improve understandings of age-related triggers to social disengagement in six Tasmanian communities that are representative of rural Australian experience, and thus of wider salience. A collaboration between academics and health and social professionals, the project investigated design solutions for service frameworks that may be useful before ageing individuals become isolated and dependent, and that may support those individuals to actively contribute to and benefit from social life. The purpose of this paper is to report on perspectives about diminishing levels of social engagement held by older rural participants and service providers, and to advance a number of key insights on ways in which to nurture social engagement and improve the experience of ageing.

Partner or perish: experiences from the field about collaborations for reform

Collaborations between researchers, policy makers, service providers and community members are critical to the journey of health service reform. Challenges are multifaceted and complex. Partners come with a variety of challenging agendas, value sets and imperatives, and see the drivers for reform from different perspectives. Different skills are required for managing the partnership and for providing academic leadership, and different structural frameworks need to be put in place for each task in each project. We have found through a series of partnerships across our research theme of healthy ageing, and consequent translation into policy and practice, that significant and innovative effort is required for both the collaboration and the research to succeed. A shared understanding of the issues and challenges is a start, but not sufficient for longer-term success. In addition to managing the research, our experience has demonstrated the need to understand the different challenges faced by each of the partners, recognise and respect personal and organisational value systems, and to establish separate mechanisms to manage strong egos alongside, but outside of, the research process.

‘I come for the friendship’: Why social eating matters

To explore an innovative social eating programme model for older Tasmanians, Eating with Friends (EWF), from the perspectives of its participants, to establish how successfully it is meeting the organisational aims of strengthening community, reducing social isolation and enhancing mental well‐being.

Eating and ageing in rural Australia: applying temporal perspectives from phenomenology to uncover meanings in older adults’ experiences

ABSTRACT Nutritious and enjoyable eating experiences are important for the health and wellbeing of older adults. Social gerontology has usefully engaged with the role of time in older adults’ eating lives, considering how routines and other temporal patterns shape experiences of food, meals and eating. Building on this foundation, the paper details one set of findings from qualitative doctoral research into older adults’ experiences of food, meals and eating. Informed by phenomenological ethnography, it engages with one of four dimensions of the human lifeworld – the temporal dimension. The research involved repeated in-depth interviews, walking interviews and observation with 21 participants aged 72–90 years, living in rural Tasmania, Australia. The temporal elements of older adults’ experiences are detailed in terms of the past, present and future. The findings show that older adults have vivid memories of eating in uncertain and austere times, and these experiences have informed their food values and behaviours into old age. In the present, older adults employ several strategies for living and eating well. Simultaneously, they are oriented towards their uncertain eating futures. These findings reveal the implicit meanings in older adults’ temporal experiences of food, meals and eating, highlighting the importance of understanding older adults’ lifeworlds, and their orientation towards the future, for developing effective responses to concerns about food and eating in this age group.