Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Australia and many other countries around the world face a significant population shift. With an aging population that is living longer, increasingly new issues of varied complexities arise that will require new perspectives to solve them. Falls are one of the major problems in the elderly, which is a serious public health problem and considered one of the “geriatric giants.” Elderly patients sustaining major trauma also bring a series of physical, multiple medical, psychological, and social challenges and consequences. In this paper, design approaches have been introduced into health (aged) care to make meaningful contributions to elderly fall management, social re-connection, and wellbeing, which provide innovative solutions besides the current clinician perspectives. Moreover, we discuss multi-disciplinary design approaches, like design thinking and key stakeholders’ co-design as applied to development of solutions for “wicked” problems in healthy aging.