Determinants of Healthy Ageing in Latvia and Iceland: Methodological Approach

Description

The longer lifespan of the population is a valuable resource and offers significant opportunities for society, but these opportunities largely depend on the long-term health of the population. However, health and wellbeing of the elderly might be affected by unforeseen circumstances such as COVID-19 pandemics both in a short and also in a long term. . Riga Stradiņš University is involved in a bilateral project with the University of Iceland “Modelling of the Impact of Covid-19 on Public Health of Elderly People in Latvia and Iceland” (agreement Nr. FM2021/23 (EEZ/NOFI/DIV) with an overarching aim to develop scientific cooperation between the countries to promote healthy ageing (HA). By using such databases on ageing populations as the "Study on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe" (SHARE) and Icelandic study on population ageing (HL20), we test and develop statistical modelling with innovative methods. In our approach, we outline HA determinants for each country separately and show differences between the societies, and then make the variables comparable using categories included in the WHO definition of HA. The novity of this project lies in providing an example on how to define HA determinants when being limited to available survey questions.. The developed model from the two databases for HA seems to be relevant to both Latvia and Iceland. The ageing processes at a certain point become similar disregard country and the welfare system etc. The explanatory value of the model is, however, not very high, which seems to imply that there are many more aspects that play significant role in HA. . Considerable attention has been paid to the limitations and benefits of our approach. We have an overall picture, but we need access to more specific variables that we seem to miss out in the current surveys, and develop new screening tools for ageing populations.

Period	29 Mar 2023
Event title	RSU Research week 2023: Society. Health. Welfare
Event type	Conference
Conference number	9
Organiser	Rīga Stradiņš University
Location	Riga, LatviaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International