UWI researcher co-authors landmark ageing study

A re­searcher at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI), St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, has co-au­thored what the uni­ver­si­ty de­scribes as a land­mark study ex­am­in­ing how In­do-Caribbean peo­ple in Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go de­fine pos­i­tive ag­ing.

The study, ti­tled Be­yond In­de­pen­dence: Be­liefs About Pos­i­tive Age­ing Among In­do-Caribbean Peo­ple in Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go, was pub­lished in The Geron­tol­o­gist, the flag­ship jour­nal of the Geron­to­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Amer­i­ca.

Dr In­drani Bachan-Per­sad, Unit Head of Eco­nom­ic En­gage­ment and In­dus­try Part­ner­ships at The UWI, was among five au­thors of the re­search, which in­volved col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive School in France, The UWI and Shar­da Uni­ver­si­ty in In­dia.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­searchers, the study is among the first to place the per­spec­tives of In­do-Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties in Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go at the cen­tre of in­ter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic re­search on ag­ing.

The re­search ex­plored how old­er peo­ple in those com­mu­ni­ties view ag­ing well and found that their per­spec­tives dif­fer from many West­ern frame­works that of­ten em­pha­sise in­di­vid­ual in­de­pen­dence, per­son­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and bio­med­ical health man­age­ment.

Re­searchers iden­ti­fied three ma­jor themes through se­mi-struc­tured in­ter­views with par­tic­i­pants.

The first was the im­por­tance of re­main­ing need­ed with­in the fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty. Par­tic­i­pants de­scribed ag­ing well as con­tin­u­ing to con­tribute to fam­i­ly life, of­fer­ing guid­ance, sup­port­ing rel­a­tives and re­main­ing in­volved in im­por­tant events and de­ci­sions.

The sec­ond theme fo­cused on faith and cul­tur­al preser­va­tion. Par­tic­i­pants viewed ag­ing well as close­ly tied to pass­ing cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, re­li­gious prac­tices and fam­i­ly his­to­ries to younger gen­er­a­tions.

The third theme cen­tred on health. Par­tic­i­pants spoke about the val­ue of tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge, in­clud­ing bush med­i­cine, herbal reme­dies and long-stand­ing cul­tur­al prac­tices, which they saw as com­ple­ment­ing for­mal health­care.

Roy Naipaul, a PhD schol­ar at the In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive School and a co-au­thor of the study, said the find­ings have prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions for health­care and pub­lic pol­i­cy.

“This re­search has re­al prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions. If we want health­care and pol­i­cy to tru­ly sup­port old­er adults in Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties, we need to start from how those com­mu­ni­ties them­selves un­der­stand what it means to age well, not from frame­works that were nev­er de­signed with us in mind,” he said.

Bachan-Per­sad said the study high­light­ed per­spec­tives that have of­ten been over­looked in in­ter­na­tion­al re­search.

“In­do-Caribbean com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana have rich and deeply root­ed un­der­stand­ings of what it means to age well, yet these per­spec­tives have nev­er fea­tured in in­ter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic re­search on ag­ing un­til now. This study is an im­por­tant step to­ward en­sur­ing that the poli­cies and sys­tems de­signed to sup­port our old­er adults are ac­tu­al­ly ground­ed in what ag­ing well means to them, and not im­port­ed from frame­works that were nev­er de­signed with our com­mu­ni­ties in mind,” she said.

The re­searchers said the find­ings have im­pli­ca­tions for health­care pro­fes­sion­als, com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions and pol­i­cy­mak­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go face ag­ing pop­u­la­tions along­side con­tin­ued em­i­gra­tion among work­ing-age adults.