About us

The University of Liverpool’s Centre for Ageing and the Life Course explores the underpinning factors shaping inequalities in ageing, as well as the subjective meaning and lived experience of health and well-being in later life. 

The ‘Frailty and Ethnicity’ research project brings together two concepts that are multifaceted lived experiences – the relationship between ethnicity and the experience of frailty in old age – in one of Britain’s most diverse cities (Leicester). Understanding how frailty is conceptualised in a diverse range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds is key to understanding health and illness in old age in these communities.

Focussed on the lived experiences of older Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, Caribbeans, and members of the African and White communities, the research aims to further understanding of frailty relative to ethnicity through analysing the collective lived experience. Context and circumstance are key to the lived experience of frailty, and this research aims to generate policy recommendations and practical tools designed to address the issue of persistent and enduring health inequality.

Thanks to ESRC funding, this interdisciplinary project brings together a team of researchers and partner organisations whose complementary expertise aims to capture aspects associated with experiences of health, illness, and frailty in old age that may be harder to articulate. The project team will be exploring a breadth of themes including specific contemporary ageing risks for groups, as well as those associated with place, social networks, employment, and access to skills/education across the life course and into old age, which will in turn be shaped by experiences of immigration, diaspora, racism, socio-economic inequality and generational culture change. 

By exploring the differences in health outcomes and lived experience between and within groups, the research aims to disentangle the multiple overlapping layers of social, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to frailty as well as those that support wellbeing and resilience.

The ‘Frailty and Ethnicity’ research project is coordinated by the Universities of Liverpool, Leicester, Nottingham, and The Free University of Brussels, working closely with Age UK (Leicester, Shire and Rutland) and The Race Equality Centre, is funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The £1.1 million project has been awarded funding of £792,000 from the ESRC. The research is in partnership with Age UK (Leicester, Shire and Rutland) and The Race Equality Centre.