Dr Helen Barrie

My current projects include:

Green spaces, public spaces and ageing well: a co-design pilot study

Outdoor and indoor environments have major impacts on older people’s mobility, independence and quality of life. Design and delivery of quality public spaces that promote health and wellbeing, social engagement with others and engagement with the environment is a key challenge for all in our rapidly growing, and increasingly population-dense cities.

• Interdisciplinary project with Professor Veronica Soebarto from Architecture
• Uses an innovative citizen science approach to audit the neighbourhoods and lived spaces of older South Australians
• Is the basis of a larger grant application for 2019

Inner City Ageing: A longitudinal study of an innovative mixed use high rise ‘village’

By 2030 two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities, and in many of these cities, at least a quarter of those urban populations will be aged 60+. New city and city fringe age specific housing, such as the Uniting Communities development in Franklin Street, means we need to think about a new use for urban spaces. We need to imagine how the built environment can become a public resource, a social opportunity, and an enabler of ageing well.

• Interdisciplinary project with Professor Veronica Soebarto from Architecture and Uniting Communities and their new Franklin Street UC building.
• Follows the building, the residents and the changing neighbourhood through the development phase and the first five years

Addressing Social Isolation using a Men’s Sheds Model: an international comparison

Men’s Sheds uniquely combine opportunities for increasing social networks and creating a sense of community and belonging, while providing links to health and wellbeing information and services. Men’s Sheds have worked very successfully in Australia; the program has successfully rolled out to the UK and Ireland and now the USA is in the early stages of development in the Men’s Sheds movement.

• This offers a unique opportunity to follow and measure the impact of Men’s Sheds on social isolation as an international comparative study.
• The project will develop a conceptual framework for the establishment of this model with a specific focus on alleviating social isolation and improving health outcomes in any adult population group.

Groundtruthing Age Friendly Cities using  Citizen Science

What cities and neighbourhoods are really age friendly and what does it truly mean to be age friendly from an older person’s perspective?  This project has a long term, stepped approach through multiple projects towards a global comparative study that ‘ground-truths’ or ‘audits’ age friendly cities and communities using a citizen science model of data collection. This uses an innovative methodological approach that takes the older person’s perspective of their neighbourhood and how age friendly it is; auditing (measuring and reviewing) attributes of their personal neighbourhood or life spaces using the Age Friendly Cities guidelines.