Hello!

Welcome to the Cochrane and Campbell Global Ageing Partnership (CCGAP) Blog which will act to share relevant and engaging current ageing-related research. 

The CCGAP is a collaboration project aiming to “optimise the health and wellbeing of ageing populations everywhere”. Their aim is to become a hub for sharing information about global ageing between individuals from across the world. The CCGAP have pledged to contribute towards the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing, being run by the World Health Organisation between 2021 and 2030, that aims to increase communication between various sectors in order to “improve the lives of older people, their families and communities”. 

I am a final year student studying Medical Sciences at the University of Exeter. Setting up and running this blog for the CCGAP is acting as my final year research project. As someone who has a keen passion for science communication it is important to me that ever-evolving health discoveries are shared with all people in a format they are able to understand. It is hoped that enough data will be able to be collected on the readership of individual blog posts in this series to allow for analysis however the process of creating this blog based on published communication styles will also create a descriptive element to my final report.

Findings from recently published scientific articles and reviews written by highly specialised researchers will be shared on the blog in a digested format intended to be easily understood by any who wish to educate themselves on up-to-date ageing-related research. 

A range of writers will work to synthesise the published scientific writing, following a common structured template, including:

• Blog post title - Alongside the full title of the referenced review.
• “Picture this…” - Explanation of the relevance and context of the research through an example of someone who could benefit from the findings first-hand.
• Summary messages - Communicating the key findings of the research.
• What the research says – Explaining research rationale, methods, results, conclusions, critiques, applications and possible next steps.
• “Where is [X] now?” - Following on from the example used in the first “picture this…” section, this section describes how the discussed research would benefit the individual or how they would/ should respond to the collected evidence.
• Reference points - The main reference article and any additional information sources used.

Hopefully this structure will help in making the research findings accessible to all.

Any specialist words included in blog content should be hyperlinked to https://getitglossary.org to provide definitions, however if the word does not appear in this glossary, the blog writer should define any other specialist vocabulary within the text.

Writing is taking place and the initial upload of blog posts will be based upon a range of topics. After the initial upload, it is hoped that weekly uploads will be possible, from a range of writers and based on a variety of topics.

The content aims to be enjoyable and educational - happy reading!

The CCGAP Blog Team :)

References:

• https://twitter.com/ccglobalageing
• https://globalageing.cochrane.org/about-us
• https://globalageing.cochrane.org/un-decade-healthy-ageing-2021-30
• https://www.who.int/initiatives/decade-of-healthy-ageing”

IMAGES – All images sourced from the free age positive image library of the Centre for Better Ageing. All images are published under the CC01.0 Universal licence, entered into the public domain. 

Katie Jacobson

BSc Medical Sciences Student

University of Exeter (UK)

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-jacobson-a7160b1a1/

If you have any comments regarding this blog post, please contact us at  globalageing@cochrane.org.   We would love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have. 

Web editor: Monserrat Conde