Message from the Chair and the Vice-Chair

Welcome to this news bulletin for COST Action IS1409 which will update you on some of the main activities of Action members

This has been a very busy time for the Training School (TS) committee led by Nicky Lefeuvre. The TS committee organised two very successful Training Schools in spring/summer 2018. The first was in Brno and was organised in cooperation with Working Group 4 (Policy and Policy tool-kits). The second was organised in cooperation with Working Group 3 (Data and Indicators).

The Short Term Scientific Missions Committee (STSM), led by Renata Siemienska has also been very active with four STSM grants being awarded to Early Career Investigators since January, 2018. Reports from the various working groups describe activities and events they engaged in this year.

In this final year of the Action, the main focus is, of course on dissemination. One of the primary dissemination activities is the final COST Action conference, which took place at NUI Galway on November 22nd and 23^rd. There was great interest in the conference, which promised to be an exciting event with over 40 presentations and distinguished keynote speakers confirmed including Dame Carol Black and Professor Chris Phillipson. There was an Irish policy roundtable session and a cross-COST Action session with speakers from the Ageism and ROSENET COST Actions. There was strong involvement of Early Career Investigators (ECI)in the conference with over a quarter of the presentations being from ECIs.

Action members have collaborated on several publications with MC members from each country preparing a country report for uploading to the website. These reports are expected to be completed by the end of the year. Several action members have contributed chapters to a book to be published by Springer in 2019. There are two other book proposals currently in preparation and calls for chapters were sent out during the spring and summer. A Special Issue of the journal Ageing & Society is nearing completion with six papers having been accepted for publication since January. A series of policy briefs is now complete, under the supervision of the leaders of Working Group 4 and were presented at the final dissemination activity – a major Policy Workshop which took place in Brussels on March 7^th and 8^th, 2019.

Finally, we encourage all COST Action members to submit papers, based on the topics of the Action to peer-reviewed journals and books with at least one colleague from another COST country – (having at least two authors from two different COST countries. Please be sure to acknowledge COST on these publications.

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