A new era for healthy ageing: ACHA launches in North East London

The Academic Centre for Healthy Ageing (ACHA) is uniquely positioned to carry out research in real-world, frontline care settings, ensuring that research is not only academically rigorous but also rooted in the realities of patients, carers, and communities.

Yesterday’s launch event brought together over 200 guests from across health, social care, academia, the voluntary sector and the community and featured keynote speeches from Professor Jugdeep Dhesi, President, British Geriatrics Society, and Dr Tom Downes, NHS National Clinical Director for Older People.

Guests also heard from ACHA’s three newly appointed professors – Professor Adam Gordon MBE and Professor Liz Sampson (both based at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health), and Professor Hamish Simpson (based at the Blizard Institute). All three bring national and international expertise in geriatric medicine, ageing research, and service innovation.

Professor Adam Gordon, ACHA Professor and Consultant Geriatrician, said: “ACHA is a chance to level the playing field in how people age. We’ll work with local communities to tackle real challenges, bring in world-class expertise, and grow future research leaders. Our goal is to make north-east London a beacon for healthy, equitable ageing – locally and globally.”

Professor Liz Sampson, ACHA Professor and Professor of Liaison Psychiatry, said: “The size of the investment, both financial but also in terms of support and access to local people, health and social care services and ICS partners, from Barts charity, Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust is truly unique. I’m a psychiatrist but being in the same department with senior colleagues from orthopaedics and geriatrics is perfect for me as my research and clinical work has always been at the interface between physical and mental health.”

Professor Hamish Simpson, ACHA Professor and Professor of Orthopaedics and Trauma, said: “As an orthopaedic surgeon many of the conditions I treat affect older people. As the population are now living longer, often with multiple conditions, we need to adjust our interventions to ensure that individuals retain a good quality of life throughout. The chance to work, with both medical colleagues and top-quality researchers from other clinical disciplines and faculties at Queen Mary, who are all keen to address ageing related problems drew me to ACHA.”

Professor Sir Mark Caulfield, Vice Principal for Health, Queen Mary’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, said: “Queen Mary University of London with Barts Health deliver real impact on health-related challenges for the benefit of our local and global community through our world-leading research. Our launch of the Barts Charity funded Academic Centre for Healthy Ageing at Whipps Cross Hospital places our research alongside the greatest unmet need to transform outcomes for our ageing community across north-east London and beyond.”

ACHA has already begun engaging with residents, carers, healthcare workers and voluntary organisations through a series of co-design workshops (or “research sandpits”), shaping the research focus of the centre to reflect what matters most to local people.