Speaker Short Biographies and Project Summaries
Janine Roberts, Keynote speaker from Malnutrition Task Force,
Email:
Janine is the Programme Director for the Malnutrition Task Force which is seeking to reduce preventable malnutrition in older people across all settings in England. She has spent over 20 years working in the National Health Service, working with the Department of Health and Hospital Trust Boards to redesign services to achieve quality improvement, improved patient and staff experience whilst delivering value for money. She is also specialises in Executive and Senior Management personal development for sustaining high performance.
Janine has directed the National Enhanced Recovery Partnership Programme for the Department of Health. She was Associate Director for the National Emergency Services Collaborative Programme which transformed emergency care in England and was Head of Transformation for the Department of Health’s 18 weeks maximum wait Elective Care Programme.
Janine has led many local quality improvement programmes focusing on theatres and length of stay. She has developed the UCLH approach to ‘Productive Outpatients’ which is seeing significant quality and financial improvements.Janine is also the Board Advisor and secretariat for ‘Exploring Global Health Opportunities’ a charity dedicated to continual education and aid in Africa.
Janine has a clinical background with a BSC in Health Studies. Prior to focusing on change management in the NHS, she was an endurance athlete competing many times a year in multiterrain and multidiscipline events such as long distance adventure races, mountain marathons and running.
Arlene Astell, University of St Andrews,Email:
NDA project: NANA: Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing
Arlene is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Warwick University, where she carried out her PhD research into the impact of dementia on communication. Her current research is concerned with developing creative interventions to support people to live and age as well as possible, including those living with conditions such as dementia. This includes CIRCA which uses touch screen technology to support communication and Living in the Moment which provides stimulating and engaging activities for people with dementia to use independently. She is the Principal Investigator of the NANA (Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing) project, which is utilising novel technology to develop an integrated toolkit to improve assessment and detection of early signs of malnutrition, frailty and cognitive decline in community-dwelling older adults. She is also PI of COBALT, which is working with older adults and health and social care staff as expert end-users to engage with and educate the ALT industry to develop products people want to use.
NANA aims to improve the collection of information about dietary intake of older adults with a view to pre-empting malnutrition and the onset of conditions such as frailty. Using touch screen technology NANA has been designed collaboratively with older adults for use in their homes to capture information about the food and drink they consume. In addition, NANA can be used to collect information about an individual’s physical activity, mood and cognitive function. This information will be useful for informing strategies to prevent physical and mental decline
in ageing, and improvements in the medical treatment and social provision for older people.
Paula Moynihan, University of Newcastle,Email:
NDA project: MAPPMAL: Multidisciplinary Approaches to a Prototype forPrevention of Malnutrition in Older People: Products, Places, People and Procedures
Paula Moynihan is a Professor of Nutrition and Oral Health in the Institute for Ageing and Health and is Director of the Centre for Oral Health at Newcastle University UK. She is a Registered Public Health Nutritionist and Dietitian. She also directs the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Nutrition and Oral Health at Newcastle University and was a member of the WHO Expert Consultation on ‘Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases’. She has worked in Nutrition research for over 25 years. Her current research focuses on the nutrition of older people and the relationships between diet and oral health throughout the lifecycle. In 2004 she won the Nutrition Society Silver Medal Award for ‘excellence in research by a young scientist’ and in 2010 she was recipient of a Distinguished Scientist Award from the International Association for Dental Research for ‘Geriatric Oral Research’.
Around 40 per cent of older patients are malnourished with those aged over 80 at highest risk. The hospitalfoodie prototype is a nutritional management and food provision system that facilitates increased engagement of all staff in the process of providing adequate nutrition to older patients and embeds a chain of accountability for nutritional care. Hospitalfoodie comprises a nutritional management and monitoring system, food products, and a supply and delivery system. The multidisciplinary team can access and act on patient nutrition information remotely and at the
bedside via touch screens to ensure all older patients have adequate food intake and nutritional care; each patient has access to a bedside touch screen to assist in their own nutritional management.
Hospital Foodie website:
Sheila Peace, Open University,Email:
NDA project: Transition in Kitchen Living
Sheila Peace is Professor of Social Gerontology in the Faculty of Health and Social Care at The Open University. She is an Academician of the Social Sciences and is currently President Elect of the British Society of Gerontology. A social geographer by first discipline, Sheila has particular expertise in the field of environment and ageing developed since her doctoral work in the 1970s. Her gerontological research embraces both the macro and micro environment and has concerned quality of life, and the design and regulation of care settings both mainstream and supportive; everyday living environments; intergenerational social interaction in public places; and the development of age-friendly communities. She is a co-author of ‘Environment and Identity in Later Life’ (2006) OUP/McGraw-Hill Education. Throughout her research career she has been involved in the development of participative research seeking innovative ways to enable older people to communicate their ideas. Currently, she is developing a new book ‘The Environments of Ageing: Space, Place and Materiality’ for Policy Press.
The ‘Transitions in Kitchen Living’ (TiKL) project has explored people’s experiences of kitchens past and present, looking at how they reflect changes in across their lives. The study involved detailed research with people aged between 60 years and early 90s living in a variety of housing in Bristol and Loughborough. Participants discussed both the experience of the kitchen during their lives and how their present kitchen suited their abilities and needs, including the coping strategies they adopted to overcome problems. The kitchen is a functional, social and meaningful place within people’s homes and in later life health and well-being can impact upon ergonomic issues such as design layout and co-location of equipment which impact on reaching and bending, and lighting which is disabling when vision becomes poor. The kitchen is a food environment that should be sensitive to changing needs across the life course. An aim of the ‘Transitions in Kitchen Living’ study is to provide advice and guidance for older people, kitchen designers’, planners’ and architects (TiKL project website:
Janice Thompson, The University of Birmingham,Email:
NDA project: MINA: Migration, nutrition and ageing across the lifecourse in Bangladeshi families. A transnational perspective
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Janice’s research interests include working with high-risk populations in community-based settings to develop, implement, and evaluate culturally-tailored interventions to reduce obesity, physical inactivity, and the subsequent risks for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Her research focuses on humans across their lifespan, with particular interests in applying mixed methods in the translation of clinical research into community settings to promote healthy and active ageing. At the University of Birmingham she is a member of the Centre for Obesity Research, the MRC-ARUK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing, and a Commissioner serving on the Birmingham Commission for Healthy Ageing in the 21st Century. Her research has been funded by the National Prevention Research Initiative, British Heart Foundation, National Institute for Health Research, Dunhill Medical Trust, Medical Research Council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing, Weight Watchers, and the ESRC-New Dynamics of Ageing Programme. In 2008, Janice was awarded a University of Bristol Engagement Award for her community-based research activities. She is a Fellow and past Vice President of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), a Scientific Committee member of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Associate Editor for the journal Public Health Nutrition, and has authored four nutrition textbooks in addition to numerous scientific publications.
The Bangladeshi population is one of the fastest growing and most socially disadvantaged ethnic groups within the UK, and have poorer health status than other ethnic groups.Nutrition plays a crucial role in one’s health,but there is no clear understanding of how eating patterns and migration affectthe nutritional status and experiences of ageing amongst Bangladeshi families. Project MINA investigated migration, nutrition, and ageing in 166 older women and their adult daughters living in Cardiff,London, and Sylhet, Bangladesh. High levels of obesity were found among Bangladeshi mothers and daughters living in Cardiff, which are associated with frequent consumption of high-fat and sweet foods and low levels of physical activity. Low levels of physical function and high risk for frailty are common amongst Bangladeshi mothers living in Cardiff. Bangladeshi mothers and daughters living in Cardiff report poorer health status than their counterparts in Bangladesh. There is a clear need for greater access to leisure facilities, day centres, and other social opportunities that can consistently offer culturally appropriate physical and social activities. There is also a need for culturally relevanthealth promotion and publichealth campaigns, provided through a range of media and incorporating oral Sylheti. In Cardiff it is daughters, as opposed to traditionally sons and daughters-in-law, who are increasingly assuming responsibility for caring for their elderly parents. Changes in family structures, wider employment opportunities for women and increased geographical mobility means that not all families may be able to care for their elderly parents. Planning and provision of healthcare and social services need to takeaccount of the diverse care needs of the growing ageing Bangladeshi population.
Alan Walker, University of Sheffield
Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology, Director of the New Dynamics of Ageing Research Programme
Alan Walker (BA, DLitt, Hon. D.Soc.Sc. (HKBU), FBA, FRSA, AcSS) is Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology at the University of Sheffield.He has been researching and writing on aspects of ageing and social policy forover 30 years. He is currently Director of the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme ( funded by the AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC and MRC, of the European Research Area in Ageing ( and FUTURAGE ( Previously he directed the UK Growing Older Programme ( and the European Forum on Population Ageing ( In 2007 he was given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Social Policy Association and the British Society of Gerontology. At the 2011 IAGG European Congress in Bologna, he was awarded the Association’s first Medal and Honorary Diploma for Advances in Gerontology and Geriatrics (Social and Behaviourial Sciences).
Key publications are available on
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