Department of Information Studies University of Sheffield

In November 2007, San Francisco hosted the annual GSA scientific meeting. To mark the 60th meeting anniversary, this year’s theme was devoted to the global perspective of challenges and opportunities in ageing. Spanning five days, the meeting offered a wide range of sessions for academics, health professionals, researchers and students, who had the opportunity to attend paper and poster presentations, roundtables and symposia, and to participate in formal and informal interactive groups, each one focusing on a specific aspect of ageing. In addition, the participants could visit the exhibition hall where numerous private and governmental organisations were presenting and promoting new products, technology and publications related to their research on ageing.

I chose to attend this conference because of my professional and academic background in health promotion and disease prevention and welfare of older people. Currently a research student at the University of Sheffield, I am investigating issues related to the management and prevention of osteoporosis and particularly how information can be used to help people at risk of this chronic disease. Health promotion has a key role in this, as it aspires to provide women with preventive information to minimise their risk of developing osteoporosis. Recent trends in Public Health and health informatics suggest that the perceptions of women regarding information should be taken into account by health care professionals, in an attempt to make health promotion more effective and successful for its intended audience. For this, my research study aims to explore the information needs and attitudes of women in relation to osteoporosis.

At the GSA meeting I had the opportunity to present my research results in a behavioural and social sciences poster session which focused on attitudes about ageing, cognition, health promotion and family. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of conference attendees that took the poster sessions seriously and showed a genuine interest in the results of current frontline research. I discussed with many of the session’s attendees the concepts of information needs and information behaviour models, and the merits of utilising these concepts, developed in the field of Information Science, for the prevention of disease in older age, as well as for the sustainability and improvement of older people’s quality of health. My participation in this session gave a very useful formative experience, and the positive feedback that I received for my work, will encourage me to carry on with greater determination and enthusiasm. Overall, I would recommend to students currently undertaking research related to health care of older people to consider presenting their work in one of the forthcoming GSA meetings.

Besides presenting my work, I also attended many symposia and poster sessions. One can never run out of choices at a GSA meeting. More than five hundred sessions took place at the meeting this year and sometimes it was challenging to select which session to attend. Hence, I attended presentations related to research on osteoporosis and especially the ones focusing on prevention and health promotion. In addition, I found the state-of-the-art presidential symposia on the challenges and opportunities of global ageing particularly informative. Speakers from Europe, North & South America, Asia and Africa, gave an overview of the implications of the increasing ageing population in these continents. The message that came across in these sessions was that healthcare professionals need to become more proactive, improve collaboration between one another and exert influence on politicians and policymakers to redirect and allocate resources towards the sustained improvement of the health, care and welfare of older people worldwide. Moreover, I was invited to the BSG Reception, hosted by the BSG President Dr. Kate Davidson, and organised for all BSG members and their guests who attended the GSA meeting.

I was privileged to attend this conference thanks to a bursary granted by the John Campbell Trust and to the contribution from the University of Sheffield Learned Societies Fund. The John Campbell Trust, an organisation within the discipline of Information Science, offers a conference bursary on an annual basis to students or young professionals in this field. Finally, I would like to thank my supervisors at the University of Sheffield, Dr. Peter Bath and Dr. Merryn Gott for their continuing guidance and support.