Dr. Paula Rochon – Founding Director of the World’s First Women’s Age Lab.
In this week’s edition of 4-Quarter Lives, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox talks with Dr. Paula Rochon, Founding Director of the world’s first Women’s Age Lab, based in Toronto, Canada. If there is one thing most people intrinsically know about older people, it is that there are more women than men in the mix and that they tend to live longer. And yet beyond that simple fact, there has been astonishingly little attention paid to either the causes or the consequences of this reality.
A Mission for Understanding
Paula Rochon’s mission, and that of the Women’s Age Lab, is to address that lack, and to address not only the medical implications, but also the social, in terms of long-term care, community connectedness and gendered ageism. Paula brings deep experience to the topic as a geriatrician, a senior scientist and researcher at Women’s College Hospital, a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and inaugural Chair in Geriatric Medicine there. She and Avivah discuss the four work pillars of the Age Lab and the gaps in our understanding that it is starting to fill. As she points out, with women being the majority of the one billion people over the age of 60 in the world, it’s time to understand and respond to their needs and priorities.
Some useful links:
Women’s Age Lab: https://www.womensresearch.ca/womens-age-lab/
FORBES article: Why We Need A Women’s Age Lab
Paula Rochon’s bio: Click here
What Gets Counted Counts: Paying Attention to Sex and Age in Health Data: Click here
Gendered Ageism Toolkit: Click here
A book mentioned by Paula is Louise Aronson’s Elderhood
Dr. Paula Rochon -The World's First Women's Age Lab