The Chair contributes to the knowledge transfer of a project in partnership with the World Health Organization and researchers from other countries

The Chair is proud to contribute to countering mistreatment of older adults on the international stage. The project Factors shaping the global political priority of addressing elder abuse, which has for objective to identify the issues and priorities which need to put on the forefront of international political agendas for years to come is complete. It relies both on a document inventory of the desk review* type containing 123 scientific articles and documents taken from the grey literature and 26 semi-directed interviews with key informants of different regions of the world.

Various themes have surfaced from these documentary analysis and research interviews, notably:

• The inherent complexity of this issue, as much for the public policies-makers then for practitioners;
• The presence, in the background, of ageism making the prioritisation of actions to counter mistreatment with governments difficult;
• The lack of awareness to the issue among public policies-makers, as well as the presence of doubt in the magnitude of mistreatment;
• The absence of intervention programs based on conclusive data showing efficiency renders such actions difficult.

*A Desk Review consists of a quality assessment of data by taking into account the dimensions of  comprehensiveness and internal and external coherence.

The scientific article, published on July 8, in The Lancet Healty Longevity is available in open access:

Mikton, C., Campo-Tena, L., Yon, Y., Beaulieu, M., and Shawar, Y. (2022). Factors shaping the global political priority of addressing elder abuse: a qualitative policy