HALCyon - Healthy Ageing Across the Life Course
The HALCyon collaborative research programme was originally funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme, a joint initiative of five UK Research Councils. The remit of the NDA is to improve the quality of life of older people.
NDA funding for the initial HALCyon programme covered the period 2008 to 2013. In 2013, HALCyon researchers joined forces with researchers on the Integrative Analysis of Longitudinal Studies of Aging (IALSA) network and secured further funding from the US National Institutes of Health.
Structure of the study
HALCyon brought together an interdisciplinary group of 23 scientists and nine UK cohort studies to understand three aspects of healthy ageing:
- Physical and cognitive capability (the capacity to undertake the physical and mental tasks of everyday living)
- Psychological and social wellbeing (how people feel and how they function in terms of relationships and social activities)
- Underlying biology of ageing. This includes cortisol (one of the body’s stress hormones), telomere length (the cell’s natural clock that tells the body how old it is) and genetic factors.
Aims
The HALCyon programme looked at:
- Inter-relationships between indicators of capability, wellbeing and biological ageing
- How these indicators of healthy ageing and inter-relationships change with age
- Common lifetime determinants
Eight inter-related work packages investigate how individual factors such as early development, lifetime health, personality and nutrition, and characteristics of areas in which study members have lived, influence indicators of healthy ageing. These factors may explain why some older people live fulfilled and active lives and why differences exist between men and women, or between social groups. Some cohort members have been interviewed to find out how they understand their life history and experiences and their response to ageing.
Find out more
More information on the HALCyon programme, including details of co-investigators, collaborators and findings can be found at www.halcyon.ac.uk.
Data and meta data created during the HALCyon programme is also available