On 22 May 2025, the University of Bath’s Healthy Later Living Network hosted a joint seminar with global partner University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada and local partner Age UK Bath & North East Somerset (B&NES).

The online event, ‘Learning from Age-friendly communities in Canada and the UK’, brought together academic researchers, policymakers, and the charity sector. They discussed the World Health Organisation’s Age-friendly Cities and Communities, with the common vision of making communities a great place to grow old in.

Michelle Dellamora, Manager of Community Initiatives and Plans in Neighbourhood and Community-Wide Services for the city of London, Ontario (an Age-friendly City for the past twelve years) spoke about the policy in practice. UWO Associate Professors Carri Hand and Afshin Vafaei discussed the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Healthy Ageing concept, and about how partnered research has led to important outcomes for older adults in London neighbourhoods.

Cerian Calonmôr, Ageing Well Programme Lead at Age UK B&NES (and University of Bath graduate), outlined the progress made in Bath. She highlighted the B&NES Older People’s Voice and 2024 Community Survey, and how local partnership are shaping and implementing focused initiatives. The University of Bath’s Assistant Professor James Fletcher discussed new research and policy collaborations in Bath and highlighted other initiatives in Age-friendly Cities such as Manchester.

The Chair, Professor of Health Psychology and Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research), Julie Barnett, spoke about the value of the partnerships and directed questions from the online audience of over 30 people.

The University of Bath’s Healthy Later Living Network is an interdisciplinary collaboration of academics, experts by experience, practitioners, policymakers and partners from the private and public sector. Its overarching aim is to lead, challenge and enable change to policy and practice which contributes to ageing well and living a healthy later life.

The University of Bath partnership with University of Western Ontario was established with the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2021, by former Bath colleague Professor Rachel Forrester-Jones. An MoU was signed in 2023 to support the development of student facing activities alongside research collaboration.