University of Alberta medical researcher Adrian Wagg is working with international colleagues to combat the health issue of incontinence - an initiative that is receiving funding both nationally and in Europe.
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is funding five international research projects that are focused on seniors' health and are among six projects funded under the European Research Area on Ageing, Europe's first joint research program in aging. Canadian researchers will be working with partners in Finland, Sweden, Israel, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, France and Norway. CIHR is providing almost $1 million of the $5 million in funding for the teams.
"The opportunities and challenges of an aging society are not singular to Canada. International collaborations are necessary to more quickly and effectively take advantage of the opportunities and find solutions to complex challenges," said Yves Joanette, scientific director of the CIHR Institute of Aging.
"The significance of the Canadian contribution to the international teams being announced today is a testament to the excellence of researchers in the area of aging in Canada, and their ability to connect globally and benefit from others' experiences."
Wagg, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, the Division Director of Geriatric Medicine at the U of A and the Capital Health Research Chair in Healthy Ageing, will work with colleagues in Montreal, the UK and France to develop a workshop to teach women how to manage their incontinence and reduce the stigma of the condition. Each of the four sites will recruit about 200 women for the three-year study and workshop, which will focus on helping women understand what causes incontinence, how they can manage it and how they can reduce the impact of incontinence in their day to day lives. Researchers will monitor the impact of the workshop on the women's lives to see if the impact of incontinence can be lessened; if these women can better learn how to self-manage incontinence and whether co-morbidities such as falls and fractures lessen after women take the workshop.
"We hope these women will have an improved quality of life," says Wagg. "That they will be more equipped to manage the condition, which help reduce the burden of incontinence and reduce associated health problems such as isolation, depression, falls and fractures. These health problems put those with incontinence at an increased risk of being put into a care home.
"This research is important because incontinence is a highly prevalent condition that has a huge impact on older people. And it's an area which is still taboo to talk about it, but it shouldn't be."