News
Frontiers in Psychology, new publication – Technology for Healthy Aging and Wellbeing: Co-producing solutions
4 January 2022
Dr Matthew Bennion, colleague at the University of Sheffield colleague, has a new article published in Frontiers in Psychology and the publication follows on from research produced by the CATCH Technology for Healthy Ageing and Wellbeing (THAW) project.
Methods to facilitate co-production in mental health are important for engaging end users. As part of the THAW initiative two interactive co-production workshops were organised, to bring together older adults, health and social care professionals, non-governmental organisations, and researchers.
In the first workshop, two activities were used: technology interaction and scavenger hunt, to explore the potential for different stakeholders to discuss late life mental health and existing technology. In the second workshop, vignettes were used, scavenger hunt, and invention test to examine how older adults and other stakeholders might co-produce solutions to support mental wellbeing in later life using new and emerging technologies.
In this paper, authors share the interactive materials and activities and consider their value for co-production. Overall, the interactive methods were successful in engaging stakeholders with a broad range of technologies to support mental health and wellbeing and in co-producing ideas for how they could be leveraged and incorporated into older people's lives and support services.
Researchers offer this example of using interactive methods to facilitate co-production to encourage greater involvement of older adults and other under-represented groups in co-producing mental health technologies and services.