King's College London

Professor Anthea Tinker, Institute of Gerontology, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine has obtained a collaborative London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/King's grant. Her fellow PI is Professor Alex Mold of the LSHTM.

Addressing the needs of older people in relation to the places where they live is one of the urgent public health issues of our time. 

This project will explore ageing in urban environments by focusing on how the health needs of older people are incorporated within the design and planning of ‘new’ towns. New towns were constructed across the UK during the post 1945 period to house overspill from London and other major urban areas. 

Much of the interest in this topic has looked to the future, but what can we learn from the past and the present?  Building on work that has considered the importance of whole town approaches, this project will consider what is peculiar about ‘new’ towns and ‘old’ people, and how this has changed over time and place. This multifaceted issue requires a multidisciplinary approach. This project will analyse this topic from a historical, anthropological, sociological and geographical perspective.

A cross-disciplinary team of researchers from LSHTM and King's includes a historian (Professor Alex Mold); a gerontologist (Professor Anthea Tinker); a geographer (Dr Clare Herrick, King's); and an anthropologist (Dr Sarah Milton, LSHTM).  A shared mode of working that draws on our different disciplinary expertise will enable us to explore this urgent issue from a range of perspectives. 

The grant is for six months and is for £14,930.60.