Welcome to ATTAIN Research– your gateway to the latest advancements in healthy ageing research. By staying connected with us, you'll receive regular updates on our ongoing initiatives to address health inequalities. Join us on this journey as we work towards establishing a transformative network for healthy ageing. Engage with ATTAIN to stay informed and be a part of shaping the future of healthy ageing research.

The ATTAIN Network is on its track to forge new interdisciplinary research collaborations across the UK and internationally - with a strong focus on exploratory mechanistic and intervention approaches, community engagement, and policy-to-practice implementation.

• Forging new interdisciplinary collaborations and research capacity
• Generating important theory, new co-created methods and approaches
• Capacity building of Early Career Researcher Co-I’s and Engagement Fellows
• Creating stakeholder links to inform our agenda and the pipeline to dissemination

Pump-priming funds - £10k 

Our new pump-priming scheme has offered funding for a series of projects addressing at least one of the following:

• To develop ideas (e.g., generate data, resources, processes, and techniques) that will help build towards substantive research bids.
• To facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration on physical activity for healthy ageing research and demonstrate the added value of such collaboration.
• To support the development of early career researchers, keen to pursue interdisciplinary, translational ageing research.

We Congratulate to the successful applicants !!!

Learn about their projects and know more about their views below

Workshops and Knowledge Exchange events

ATTAIN will host four events (2 per year) to further develop the network research theme to ensure our key outcomes are achieved. Each event will be delivered by Network Core Team members in their host cities, in partnership with our advisory group, stakeholders, and community members.

We will allocate, through a competitive process, travel bursaries to ECRs to enable them to attend and engage at in-person events.

Early Career Researcher Fellowships

The purpose of this scheme is to expand the Network by reaching out to outstanding ECRs and enabling them to engage with approaches to interdisciplinary healthy ageing/activity research, to develop new skills, methodologies, and applications for their work.

Funded ECR Fellows will also contribute to the developing ECR agenda of ATTAIN across 2023-24. See details about our funded ECR fellows below. 

We are delighted to announce the successful applicants for our ECR Engagement Fellowships. The fellowship is intended to support ECRs to establish their research and innovation portfolio or develop a new research area or collaboration within the field of physical activity and ageing. 

Overcoming Awareness and Misconception Barriers of Evidence-based Exercise Prescription in Later Life – Dr. Ashley Gluchowski

Background & Aims

Dr. Ashley Gluchowski will lead a series of co-designed public podcasts to inclusively disseminate academic journal findings to the exercise providers, policymakers, and other key stakeholders involved with implementing physical activity interventions in the real world. This plan is in line with her recent findings that exercise providers are unaware of physical activity guidelines and unsure where to find the latest evidence-based physical activity and exercise interventions for older adult clientele.

Project outcomes

• 6+ evidence-based podcasts with experts in physical activity and exercise in later life during the Fellowship, with strong potential of ongoing episodes and impact.
• Increased awareness, knowledge, and implementation of evidence-based physical activity guidelines by exercise providers in practice (and research publication using survey data)
• Mixed methods surveys will be used pre- and post-podcast series to determine the desirability and effectiveness of this modality of dissemination. 

“I am passionate about working closely with the ATTAIN Network to increase the reach and impact of our evidence-based exercise interventions in our ageing communities. This ECR Fellowship will allow me to explore ‘fresh’ interdisciplinary ways to tackle the challenge of raising awareness and disseminating evidence-based exercise guidelines to older adults and their exercise providers.”

Understanding and Identifying Barriers and Facilitators to Artificial Intelligence-powered Digital Physical Activity and Lifestyle Interventions in People from Ethnic Minority Groups (AI-ACTIV-E) – Dr. Thomas Wilkinson

Background & Aims

Dr. Wilkinson will conduct a series of focus groups and a survey to understand and identify barriers and facilitators to digital physical activity interventions in ethnic minority communities. 

Despite the high interest in physical activity, many individuals lack the necessary experience in being active and therefore have low levels of knowledge and confidence to become and stay active. Providing individuals with personalised information about health, physical activity, lifestyle, and resources in the community, may be one strategy to help increase levels of physical activity.

For effective lifestyle changes to occur, information must be tailored to the individual’s health, goals, motivations, and overall ability. In the context of ethnic minority health, information must also be culturally adapted, sensitive to religious needs, and accessible to those where English is not proficient. However, well-designed resources to deliver personalised lifestyle and physical activity advice are not yet widely available.

As a result, Dr. Wilkinson’s project aims to:

• Conduct a series of public patient involvement events to explore participants’ understanding and identify barriers and facilitators to digital physical activity interventions.
• Gain a new understanding of barriers and facilitators to digital physical activity interventions and AI-delivered healthcare in people from ethnic minority groups through an online survey.

Outcomes

• A series of focus groups made up of a diverse range of participants across different ethnic minority groups. These focus groups will explore current and future usage of digital-based resources to facilitate physical activity behaviour and investigate views of use of AI in digital-based healthcare applications.
• Findings from the online survey will be written up and published in a peer-reviewed manuscript.
• Establish initial contacts with potential future collaborators and researchers in the area.

“With support from the Centre of Ethnic Health Research, I am looking forward to being able to reach out into different communities and explore their views on the role of AI in helping people become more active. AI offers so much potential in providing personalised guidance around lifestyle, however it implementation depends on users beliefs, trusts, and ability to engage with it. I am hoping to use the information from this project to develop new AI-based tools to promote physical activity in different underserved groups.”