Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR) have released a free web-based toolkit that facilitates research on healthy ageing. The Healthy Ageing Toolkit provides an overview of data availabilities and gaps to study ageing across the world.
Led by University of Sydney School of Public Health Senior Lecturer Dr Saman Khalatbari-Soltani, the research team identified and systemised information on 287 existing ageing cohort studies across the globe and their available measurements to study healthy ageing.
Using the findings from the multifaceted review and search strategy, the researchers developed a web-based Healthy Ageing Toolkit, a free searchable online cohort study information repository, which is now available online.
Healthy Ageing Toolkit’s search dashboard assists researchers in finding cohort studies from across the world with their measures of interest. It also offers insight into data collection improvements, supporting the global, regional, and national monitoring of actions, programs, and policies.
“Finding longitudinal cohort studies with relevant sets of measurements on intrinsic capacity and physical, social, and environmental factors is usually a challenging and time-consuming step for any epidemiological research,” says Dr Saman Khalatbari-Soltani.
“The Toolkit is a unique resource as it represents detailed information on global cohort studies and their relevant measurements to facilitate studying ageing and its inequities; this information has never been available before,” she says.
The Toolkit might also facilitate cross-national comparison studies, providing insights into healthy ageing trajectories and inequities considering the international context—an important current knowledge gap.
“We plan to keep updating the Toolkit by adding newly established ageing cohorts, and also providing an option for principal investigators of cohort studies to contact us in case of an update to their data collections,” says Dr Khalatbari-Soltani.
The Healthy Ageing Toolkit is available online here.