Making A Difference Award success for research on covid-19 and older people, and tackling cultural inequalities.

Muarg Emerging Impact winner

Tine Buffel, Christopher Phillipson and colleagues from the Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group (MUARG) have won the Outstanding benefit to society through research – Emerging impact category of this year’s Making a Difference Awards.

Their work highlights the impact of COVID-19 on older people across the region, especially in relation to declining social contact and feelings of mental and physical deterioration. The research identified gaps in service provision for older people arising from the pandemic, in particular groups from minority ethnic communities, people self-identifying as LGTBQ+ , and those at risk of social isolation from low incomes or poor health.

Paul McGarry, Assistant Director of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, said the research was ‘a really unique piece of work which gave a platform to older people who were living in low income and marginalised communities…it was an important and powerful testimony of older people’s voices’.

Sadia Habib, research associate at the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) was highly commended for her work – also in the outstanding benefit to society through research category – for her work on the Our Shared Cultural Heritage project (OSCH) at Manchester Museum. OSCH aims to make museums better places for people to tackle cultural inequalities. Sadia and the young people’s group from OSCH were also commended for their work on the Whose Statues, Whose Stories? project which explored young people’s opinions about public memorials in their cities. Congratulations to Sadia and OSCH for this double commendation.