University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Key contact
Professor Carol Jagger, Department of Health Sciences
Other contacts:
Emma Regen
Carol Jagger has recently moved to Newcastle University.
About
The University of Leicester is one of the UK’s leading research and teaching universities. There are 34 academic departments located in five faculties: Arts, Law, Medicine and Biological Sciences, Science and Social Sciences. The Department of Health Sciences is a research-led department with established strengths in epidemiology, medical statistics, social science, public health, primary care, health services research and psychiatry. Structured to support innovative multidisciplinary and multi-method solutions to research questions, its mission is to conduct high quality scientific research that can inform policies and practices aimed at securing people’s health and well being. The Department has been structured to achieve strength in depth in a limited number of research fields one of which is Ageing and Older People.
Carol Jagger is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Leicester Nuffield Research Unit. She has an international reputation in the epidemiology of ageing and age-related disease and disability and is acknowledged as the leading UK researcher on health expectancy. Since 1995 she has been closely involved with the European Network on Health Expectancy Euro-REVES whose projects were initially funded by Biomed II and then the EU Health Monitoring Programme. These projects identified causes for the lack of harmonisation of healthy life expectancies in Europe and developed a European health module which will form a core module in the planned European Health Interview Survey, part of the European Health Survey System upon whose Steering Committee Jagger sits.
Jagger was co-lead of the European Health Expectancy Monitoring Unit (EHEMU) funded by the EU Public Health Programme (2003116) and co-leads of the European Health and Life Expectancy Information System (2006109). Both these projects monitored inequalities in healthy life years across Europe, exploring the macro level causes and the main diseases determinants.
Jagger is Deputy Chair of the Task Force on Health Expectancy and was closely involved in the development of one of the earliest UK cohort studies specifically concerned with ageing (the Melton Mowbray study). She has been directly involved in the running and analysis of one of the current leading longitudinal cohorts of older people (the MRC Cognitive Function and Ageing Study – MRC CFAS) and is a co-investigator on the new CFAS cohort funded by MRC and a new cohort of the oldest old based at Newcastle University (MRC Newcastle 85+ Study).
Using MRC CFAS she is leading a workpackage in the ESRC funded MAP2030 project which explores the impact of changing disease patterns on the future burden of disability in older people building on earlier work for the Wanless Review of Social Care ‘Securing Good Care for Older People: Taking a long-term view’.
Jagger continues to be a major contributor to research on long-term care and services at the primary/secondary care interface within a multidisciplinary group locally and nationally, this work includes: Leicestershire censuses of over 65s in residential care; a national evaluation of intermediate care; forecasting the need for long-term care; evaluation of hospital at home and day hospital rehabilitation; best place of care for elderly patients after an acute illness; effective discharge procedures for elderly patients; and an evaluation of day hospital compared to home-based rehabilitation.
Jagger has led on a range of publications addressing issues of the causes and consequences of disability in older people and investigating disease-specific aspects of disability, and these papers have appeared in the highest quality general, epidemiological and specialist ageing journals (47 since the year 2000). Jagger has been invited to give talks to a wide variety of audiences including the UK Treasury, the International Longevity Centre, the European Directors of Social Statistics, the IUSSP and the International Association of Gerontology. She is an Associate Editor of Age and Ageing and serves as a reviewer for a number of international journals and for funding agencies predominantly the UK Research Councils.