renEWL Launch Event

16th July 2014

On Wednesday 16th July 2014, the renEWL team hosted a launch event at University College London.  Participants were invited from external organisations that could potentially use or be impacted by the results of the renEWL consortium, such as the Department for Works and Pensions.  The purpose of the event was to introduce the renEWL consortium to external stakeholders and to consult with the attendees to help us to deliver policy relevant research. A programme of the event is available here.

The half-day began with Professor Jenny Head, Principal Investigator of renEWL, who introduced the members of the renEWL research team and outlined the aims of the renEWL research consortium. Her presentation described the longitudinal and lifecourse studies that will be used and included some preliminary results.

Following, Dr Mai Stafford, co-Principal Investigator of renEWL, gave a talk on 'Early predictors of work/retirement status in early old age: evidence from the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development.  Wrapping up presentations from the renEWL team, Dr Nicola Shelton presented work on the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Survey titled 'Assessing the contributions of region, the workplace and individual health and social factors to extended working life.

After a short break, Brian Beach, from the International Longevity Centre UK (ILC-UK), was gracious enough to present an external stakeholder view on 'The Opportunities and challenges of an older workforce'.  The talk was based on a report that ILC-UK published in 2013 on 'Working Longer: An EU perspective', a report  that set out the context of an ageing society across Europe and considered the case for extending working lives and the role of EU institutions in this. 

The remainder of the meeting was devoted to hearing attendees' views of the research project and what research questions would be the most beneficial to their organisation. Many helpful suggestions were made and the renEWL team are now deciding how best to incorporate discussion points into the renEWL research agenda.

We thank all of the participants for your help in making our launch event such a success!

Sincerely,

If you would like to hear upcoming events or future research outputs, please sign up for our mailing list. Slides are available upon request to renewl@ucl.ac.uk.

The renEWL project is a multidisciplinary research consortium, jointly funded by the ESRC and MRC under the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Cross-Council Programme initiative [ES/L002892/1] under the title of 'Integrated studies of working later in life: individual and contextual determinants of extended working'.  The consortium includes scientists in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London (UCL), the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing (LHA) at UCL, the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, the University of Stockholm and the Karolinska Institute.