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Cancer is a major health problem that is widespread in elderly people. Paradoxically, older people suffering from cancer are often excluded from clinical trials and are undertreated when compared to younger patients. One explanation for these observations is age stigma (ie, stereotypes linked to age, and thus ageism). These stigmas can result in deleterious consequences for elderly people's mental and physical health in "normal" aging. What, then, is the impact in a pathological context, such as oncology? Moreover, health care professionals' attitudes can be tainted with ageism, thus leading to undesirable consequences for patients. To counter these stigmas, we can apply some possible interventions emerging from research on normal aging and from social psychology, such as intergenerational contact, activation of positive stereotypes, self-affirmation, and so on; these tools can improve opinions of aging among the elderly people themselves, as well as health care professionals, thus affecting patients' mental and physical health.

Age discrimination in health and social care is a universal issue with significant potential ramifications for practice, and one which should be explicitly addressed in health and social care pre-registration education. However, developing teaching and learning strategies to effectively address this subject is complex given that implicit/indirect discrimination based upon tacit beliefs and assumptions, is problematic and difficult to tackle. This paper discusses the importance of teaching age and discrimination to student nurses in the context of the development of a novel approach to this aspect of education from a life course perspective. This discussion is based personal and professional reflections of the authors on the delivery of the teaching session over a number of years with approximately 500 student mental health nurses to date. The emerging themes of this are reported here and their implications for education and practice discussed. Exploring age and discrimination in relation to children and young people and older people in particular has enabled student nurses to explore the concept as one which requires critical reflection. This promotes awareness of usually unexamined personal attitudes in relation to age in order to enhance the potential for good experiences of health services for all people in need of them., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: to examine perceived age discrimination in a large representative sample of older adults in England., Methods: this cross-sectional study of over 7,500 individuals used data from the fifth wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), a longitudinal cohort study of men and women aged 52 years and older in England. Wave 5 asked respondents about the frequency of five everyday discriminatory situations. Participants who attributed any experiences of discrimination to their age were treated as cases of perceived age discrimination. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the odds ratios of experiencing perceived age discrimination in relation to selected sociodemographic factors., Results: approximately a third (33.3%) of all respondents experienced age discrimination, rising to 36.8% in those aged 65 and over. Perceived age discrimination was associated with older age, higher education, lower levels of household wealth and being retired or not in employment. The correlates of age discrimination across the five discriminatory situations were similar., Conclusion: understanding age discrimination is vital if we are to develop appropriate policies and to target future interventions effectively. These findings highlight the scale of the challenge of age discrimination for older adults in England and illustrate that those groups are particularly vulnerable to this form of discrimination.

The Ageing in the Growth Corridors Project was initiated as a partnership between the University of Melbourne and the Department of Health in the Northwest Metropolitan Region of Melbourne, Australia. It involved a research team working with six project officers appointed to stimulate development in relation to an aging population in the sprawling outer metropolitan growth corridors. This article identifies the key lessons learned in terms of project implementation relating to attitudinal and structural barriers to the development of an age-friendly environment in areas of rapid urban growth. The findings illustrate some of the dilemmas raised by competing program conceptions, a dynamic and changing federal/state policy context, and local resource and strategic management constraints. The partnership with the university, nevertheless, provided a point of stability and continuity for the project officers in implementing their mandate.

This article describes a Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Gero-Ed Center BEL Project's activities and reports its final outcomes. An oral history interview in paired human behavior and practice skills courses addressed gerontological social work competencies focused on assessing and addressing values and biases regarding aging, and the ability to relate concepts and theories of aging to practice. Significant increases in perceived proficiency in these competencies occurred, as did significant decreases in negative attitudes toward older people and working with older adults. Qualitative data supported these results. Findings suggest social work educators utilize a combination of classroom-based and experiential learning to maximize student development.

Aging of the population is one of the dominant trends in the XXI century. It is expected that by 2050, more than a quarter of the world's population (27%) will be 65 years or older. Increase of older persons' proportion in the population of most countries entails a change in the scale and structure of morbidity requiring higher costs for medical care, social security, including pensions. Ageing appears on the international agenda for more than 30 years. The Human Rights treaty bodies rank the elderly as a vulnerable group, who are more susceptible to various forms of discrimination. However, there is currently no any international legal instrument specifically dedicated to the problems of protection of the elderly at a time when their discrimination and stigmatization is a very common phenomenon.

This descriptive study explored the influence of specific geriatric knowledge on second and third year nursing students in their provision of care to older adults. Nineteen student participants provided qualitative data on their values and beliefs about nursing older adults prior to their attendance at a 1-h session teaching about two assessment tools: SPICES (Sleep disorders, Problems with feeding, Incontinence, Confusion, Evidence of falls, Skin breakdown) and BPI-SF (Brief Pain Inventory-Short Form). Data were again collected following a 6-week practice experience in which the same students had the opportunity to implement the tools. Four emerging themes, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, and application, suggested how the students' geriatric knowledge and attitudes evolved and took on personal meaning in their intermediate practice experiences. Their realization of the hegemony associated with devaluing of the care of older adults warrants further examination into how geriatric knowledge is conveyed and assimilated., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is considered by many to be the most important judicial institution of the European Union today. Despite the potential importance and relevance of the ECJ rulings to the lives and rights of older Europeans, no research has attempted to analyse or to study the ECJ rulings in this field., Objective: to describe the ECJ case-law in the field of elder rights., Methods: using a computerised search of the ECJ database, between the years 1994 and 2010, 123 cases directly dealing with legal rights of older persons were analysed., Results: on average, only 1-2% of the annual ECJ case-load addresses rights of older persons. Unlike the clear trend in the increase of the total ECJ case load, there was no similar trend of increase in the number of cases directly involving older persons' rights. However, in the majority of the elder-rights cases, the ECJ decision was in support of the older person's rights., Conclusions: the ECJ can potentially serve as an important protector of rights of older Europeans, if and to the extent that these cases reach its jurisdiction.

In a report from Age UK on the 'oldest old', aged 85 and over, nurses alongside health and social care experts examine the challenges and opportunities being presented to health services. This article explains why conventional medical approaches are inappropriate for this age group.

This cross-sectional study examined the associations among perceived vulnerability to disease, aging knowledge, and ageism (positive and negative) in a sample of undergraduate students enrolled in a human development course (N = 649; M age = 19.94 years, SD = 2.84 years). Perceived vulnerability to disease and aging knowledge were associated with self-reported ageist behaviors. Undergraduates who viewed themselves as more susceptible to disease and knew less about the aging process tended to report more negative ageist behavior. Sex moderated the association between aging knowledge and ageist behavior, indicating the association was stronger for males. Discussion focuses on implications for gerontology educators.

The purpose of this study was to examine age, gender, training and experience in aging issues, fear of death, and multicultural competence in predicting counseling psychologists' global attitudes toward older adults and specific clinical judgments concerning a case vignette of an older client. A national sample of 364 practicing counseling psychologists participated in the study. Participants completed a demographic measure, Polizzi's refined version of the Aging Semantic Differential (Polizzi, 2003 ), a survey of professional bias based on a clinical vignette of a 70-year-old woman (James & Haley, 1995), the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale 3.0 (Lester, & Abdel-Khalek, 2003), the Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness Scale (MCKAS; Ponterotto, Gretchen, Utsey, Rieger, & Austin, 2002), and a Training and Experience Questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to investigate the extent to which the selected variables predicted more favorable attitudes toward older adults and less professional bias toward an older client beyond prediction by age and gender. Results revealed that older age and higher total scores on the MCKAS predicted less professional bias in clinical judgments. Gender was a significant predictor of global attitudes toward older adults. Findings suggest that multicultural knowledge, awareness, and skills are important in working with older adults.