On 3rd July 2024, UKAgeNet was delighted to convene its first research symposium “Bridging Biological and Social Sciences in Ageing Research: UKAgeNet” as part of the British Society for Gerontology’s 53rd Annual Conference at Newcastle University. The UKAgeNet initiative (supported by the Dunhill Medical Trust) aims to unite the UK’s centres, institutes and networks on ageing to speak as one voice to policy makers to raise the profile of ageing research and ensure that the UK’s ageing research capabilities can deliver the impact we urgently need. To do so, UKAgeNet has worked to create an interdisciplinary forum for knowledge exchange, discussion and collaboration among UK centres and networks. However, in order for this to be effective, there is vital work to do to bridge the collaboration gap between biomedical and the social sciences and arts & humanities.

This was the principal motivation behind the symposium which brought together experts from across disciplines to discuss the barriers and challenges to interdisciplinary collaboration, to share good practice and examples of what has worked so far, and to define the next steps for UKAgeNet to facilitate collaborative progress. 

There were presentations from Alan Walker (Professor of Social Policy and Social Gerontology and Co-Director of the University of Sheffield Healthy Lifespan Institute), Judith Phillips (Professor of Gerontology, University of Stirling, and Research Director for the Healthy Ageing Challenge), and Lynne Cox (UKAN Co-Director, Co-Director of BLAST Network, University of Oxford) who set the scene by outlining the UKAgeNet mission, progress and examples from the BBSRC-MRC UK Ageing Networks (UKAN), and contributions from discussants Ilaria Bellantuono (Professor of Musculoskeletal Ageing, Co-Director of the University of Sheffield Healthy Lifespan Institute), Carol Holland (Professor in Ageing Director of the Lancaster University Centre for Ageing Research) and Chris Phillipson (Professor of Sociology and Social Gerontology, Co-Director of the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing). Finally, an open discussion welcomed input and queries from the audience. 

The ensuing discussion centred on barriers, success and next steps and is summarised below. 

Barriers

Despite notable efforts and some excellent examples of good practice (see next section), it was felt that the barriers and challenges to integration had not greatly improved from the early 2000s. Barriers ranged from the ideological to the practical. For example, objections from social scientists to what they saw as an overly medicalised deficit-based approach to ageing from the biological sciences, while at the same time biologists tend to believe that the solution to extend healthy life expectancy lies in   understanding  biological drivers of ageing, and in the medical prevention of diseases with little consideration for social variables including addressing inequalities. Both disciplines sometimes had a tendency to see their own discipline as of principal importance in ageing research, and the other as subsidiary. Instead, expertise has to integrate  focus on the problem to solve and and understand which tools are the best to address it . There were practical barriers too. There has been notable investment from funding bodies in cross-disciplinary research but often cross-disciplinary reviewing processes can end up ultimately skewed towards one discipline or another. Interdisciplinary networks have been pump primed and then funding withdrawn so it is sometimes difficult to deliver impact. In addition, universities have a poor understanding of the time and effort it takes to create well functioning interdisciplinary teams. 

What has worked

Participants shared many examples of biosocial collaboration as evidence of good practice, for example Levy et al. (2002), Pietrzak et al. (2016), the New Dynamics of Ageing programme and the Telomere Research Network which brought together biologists and researchers in population health to explore telomeres as sentinels of environmental exposure, psychosocial stress and disease susceptibility.

There was also the UK Ageing Networks (UKAN), funded jointly by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC), which draws together 11 UK-wide ageing research networks to facilitate knowledge exchange, forge new collaborative links and enable novel research across all academic disciplines, with the aim of improving health and wellbeing for older adults. Networks included diverse research on exercise, muscle ageing, the extracellular matrix, skin, society and metabolism, diet, biology and drug discovery, cognitive frailty, drug trials.

The University of Sheffield’s Healthy Lifespan Institute was held up as an example of Institutional investment in cross-disciplinary research. The Institute was given time (a crucial factor) to build mutual trust and respect between the biosocial  disciplines. An understanding that both parties had the same goal  i.e. improving health in our region moved the focus from each party being focus on their own discipline as the most important to find the best solution regardless of the disciplineIt was felt that Early Career Researchers (ECR) were particularly amenable to working across disciplines and in doing so often brought their PI’s and Supervisors along with them. This was thought to be such a promising area that UKAgeNet will shortly be sponsoring a PhD discipline hopping award to help ECR to find multidisciplinary angles in their project. 

There were certain topics that were particularly fruitful areas of biosocial collaboration. For example the Frailty group at Manchester where there had been a cluster of disciplines working together – from geriatric medicine, medical sociology, public health, social statisticians, and related areas and findings were highly translational. 

A BSG commissioned evaluation of the Impact Case studies in ageing from both the REF2014 and REF2021 found that in 2021 there was almost double the percentage of impact case studies related to ageing than there was in 2014 (8.4% of case studies submitted), and of the 25 case studies sampled in 2021, there was evidence of collaborative work in all of them, an increase of 79% in the REF 2014. 

Next steps

There were excellent recommendations for actionable next steps towards bridging the collaborative gap, including: 

• Create a roadmap of areas of l research priorities of mutual interests to both biomedical and social scientists and Select areas where the research goal is meaningful to all disciplines involved.
• Create opportunities for ECR training schemes/capacity building in interdisciplinary research, particularly at the biosocial interface and continue to engage ECR who are enthusiastic to work across disciplines. 
• Consider if some disciplines can function as bridge disciplines which can support the bridging of understanding between basic lab science and social science. Psychology is a potentially good contender for bridge discipline. The exchange of theory and methods can also be used to bridge disciplines and a good place to start.
• Advocate for funding to establish and build on international partnerships in priority areas of biosocial ageing research which lasts beyond 2-3 years to firm up the collaboration and promote a change in culture
• Advocate for funding that are truly UKRI as opposed to sponsored by one of the research council, to ensure balance of disciplines and projects have a genuinely biosocial goal Funding stream with explicit ‘biosocial’ criteria (e.g. as in NDA definition of ‘interdisciplinary’) 
• Exploit the synergy among UKAgeNet, BBSRC-MRC UK Ageing Networks (UKAN), EuGMS, BGS, BSG, BRSA to promote biosocial interdisciplinary research. 
• Learn from thinkers in gerontology from the US such as Robert Butler and G Stanley Hall where research programmes are ahead of the UK in integrating the biological and social sciences. Heed approaches to biosocial collaboration such as Harris and McDade (2018). 

Overall, the symposium provided a lively and informative overview of current thinking, good practice and ideas for action in the collaboration of the biological and social sciences in ageing research. With the potential change in government bringing in a more prevention-focused approach to health, there was agreement that the symposium had been timely and inspiring.