How can we provide long-term care and support to older people who live in resource constrained countries and communities? Answering this challenging question requires significant research and innovation, demanding out-of-the-box thinking that strives to keep older people’s needs and perspectives at the centre.
Leon Geffen’s work over the last 10 years has worked to provide just that: developing creative yet effective ways to provide older people in under-resourced settings with the care and support they need to live with meaning, dignity, and rights. In 2013, he established AgeWell, an community-based peer support programme that involves training peer supporters to visit older persons living in their homes with the aims of reducing isolation, improving social support, identifying health and social needs, and generating a sense of community. The impact of the programme is well supported by the evidence: studies showed that participants felt concrete improvements in terms of health and well-being, as well as with satisfaction of social support.
However, Leon Geffen did not stop there – he went on to establish the Samson Institute for Ageing Research, which provides an engine for research and innovation to improve the health and well-being of older persons in the African region. Through the Institute, Leon Geffen has developed for instance a new instrument for assessing the health and well-being of older persons, which has been translated into multiple African languages and used extensively in local community contexts around the world. Most recently, Leon Geffen has been working with the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa to develop a guide and roadmap to implement the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing in the African region, connecting local and regional contexts to a global framework.
Leon Geffen demonstrates that research and innovation that responds to older people’s needs – and seek solutions to more challenging situations – can have wide transformative impacts resonating from local levels up to regional and global contexts. It is possible to find answers to the most pressing and complex questions of our time, and we will need them if we are to transform the world to be a better place to grow older.