Active Ageing | People

Active Age involves successful principal investigators as well as promising younger scientists

John Gallacher is Reader in Environmental Epidemiology and leads Active-Age. He learned his Epidemiology at the MRC Epidemiology Unit (South Wales).

Since returning to Epidemiology in 2001 he has become PI for the Caerphilly Prospective study (CaPS) and leads the National Epidemiology Wales (NEW), Biobank Cymru and Cardiovascular Events Gene Bank consortia. He is also a steering group member for UK Biobank, VOTES and NeuroDem and collaborates on the Airwaves and CARTaGENE studies.

He is a member of the Integrated Analysis of Longitudinal Studies in Ageing consortium and the Lifecourse and Ageing NDA Preparatory Network. His research interests include Psychosocial determinants of Vascular Disease and Dementia, the Haemostatic and Inflammatory basis of Dementia and the development of large-scale Epidemiology methodology.

His current grant income is £3.1 million.

Tony Bayer is Senior Lecturer and Acting Head of the Department of Geriatric Medicine. He is also Director of the Memory Team, a specialist clinical service that facilitates research into cognitive decline and the development of dementia. He is on the Steering Groups of the Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Network in Wales (NeuroDem), the Older People Research Network in Wales (OPAN), and the European Collaborative Geriatric Research Network (Geronto-Web). He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel of Alzheimer Europe and of EDCON and a member of the Data Monitoring and Ethics Review Committee for the MRC funded DOMINO Trial.

His research interests are Cognitive decline, Dementias and neurodegenerative disease , ethical issues and older people and communication and older people.

His current grant income is £1.8 million.

Sinead O’Mahony is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geriatric Medicine. She is also Deputy Chair of the Academic and Research Committee of the British Geriatrics Society and Chair of the Drugs and Prescribing section of the British Geriatrics Society.

Her research interests include breathlessness, as a cause of disability amongst older people living in the community, extending research on drug metabolism and drug effects in older people to applied clinical settings including frailty and acute settings such as hip fracture, pneumonia and delirium, the pathogenesis of frailty and the importance of age gender bias in the evidence base underpinning therapeutics. She won the Best Paper Award at the American Geriatrics Society Conference, 2004.

Current grant income is £333,000.

Professor Glyn Elwyn is Research Professor in the Department of Primary Care and Public Health. He co-chairs the International Patient Decision Aids Standards Collaboration (IPDAS) which is currently developing the first attempt to ensure quality assurance in this field 3.

We are conducting an online trial (CR UK) of a decision technology to assess the impact of informing men over 50 about the pros and cons of taking the PSA test and have been asked to steer the development of a decision technology for men considering treatment choices for prostate cancer on behalf of a Department of Health agency. In addition, we are funded by CR UK to develop a decision technology for women, diagnosed by screening mammography, facing the choice of either conservative breast surgery or mastectomy, when diagnosed with early breast cancer.

Current grant income is £893,000.

Professor Peter Elwood, Director of the MRC Epidemiology Unit prior to his retirement is one of the founder scientists of the Caerphilly Prospective Study. He conducted the first trial demonstrating the benefit of Aspirin for cardiovascular disease risk and conducted a wide range of studies into nutrition and child growth and the health effects of Lead pollution.

Since his retirement Professor Elwood maintains an active interest in the prophylactic use of Aspirin and nutritional determinants of vascular disease.

Frank Dunstan is Professor of Medical Statistics. He is a member of the steering group of the Caerphilly Prospective Study and has worked extensively in research on determinants of mental health problems, with special interest in environmental influences. Other research interests include antibiotic resistance, and statistical modelling, including multilevel, time series and simulation modelling.

He is a member of the MRC College of Experts and current grant income is in excess of £1.7 million.

Daniel Farewell is MRC Training fellow in the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Cardiff University. He is a statistical methodologist with a particular interest in epidemiology.

His methodological research interests include longitudinal data analysis, informative drop-out, mixed effects modelling, inference for multilevel models, and Bayesian sensitivity analysis. His substantive research interests encompass the social and environmental determinants of mental and physical health, and the detection of non-accidental injury in children.

He is a trial statistician, and on the trial steering committee, for the Teams Talking about Trials RCT, which is investigating the role of communication in multi-disciplinary cancer teams.

Scott M. Hofer is Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and Director, Psychsocial Core of the Center for Healthy Aging Research at Oregon State University. He serves on editorial boards for Gerontology and Multivariate Behavioral Research, as ad hoc reviewer for over 20 journals, and as member of review panels for NIH and internationally he has co-organized international conferences on aging, most recently The International Conference on the Future of Cognitive Aging Research with Duane Alwin and held at Penn State in May, 2005. A direct outcome of this conference, The Handbook on Cognitive Aging, is currently under contract with Sage with an expected 2007 publication date.

His research examines the role of aging and health on changes in cognitive functioning, in interaction with demographic and psychosocial influences. This research involves collaborations with national and international researchers on longitudinal studies on development and aging, with innovations related to intensive measurement designs and inference in the context of mortality and attrition. He is actively engaged in an international collaborative network for the coordinated and integrative analysis of longitudinal studies on aging (IALSA), currently involving over 20 longitudinal studies.

Chris Webster is Professor of Urban Planning. He is Director of Research in the School of City and Regional Planning. He is also Director of the UK Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE). He leads the Cardiff University Spatial Analysis Research Group. He has an Honorary Chair in the Department of Real Estate and Construction, Hong Kong University.

His recent research has focused on the related themes of: gated communities and the evolution of territorial governance, planning and property rights, urban complexity. He is co-editor of the journal Environment and Planning B and founding editor of the new journal CEBE Transactions. His work has been widely published in journals such as Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning B, Urban Studies, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Computers Environment and Urban Systems, and Town Planning Review. His work has been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific, United Nations Educational and Cultural Organisation, United Nations Development Program, the Higher Educational Funding Councils for Wales and England, and the former Welsh Office. He is a member of the editorial boards of Environment and Planning B and Planning Theory.

Since 1990 he has been awarded grants totalling £4.8 million.

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