Between 25th and 29th of May The 22nd Nordic Congress of Gerontology was organised in Gothenborg (Sweden). The leading theme this year was Age Well – Challenges for Individuals and Society. About 1000 participants came to take a part in this event, not only from northern countries, but also from UK, USA, India, Tunisia or Portugal. Our country was represented by some participants, among which Marta Rzadkiewicz from PRACTA project. She has presented a poster with data from pilot study (as one of the first outputs from this research) illustrating the elderly patients’ attitude toward the illness and treatment as seen by themselves and the doctors.

Numerous plenary and state of the art lectures composing the programme of the Congress were rooted in various disciplines from demographic predictions through epidemiology, nutrition, medicine, psychology to genetics and molecular research. More in detail were seminars and oral posters sessions were concerning subjects such as: nutrition and functioning, obesity, caring for seriously ill elderly, aspects of formal and informal care, age specific health and illness issues (oral health, stroke, dementia, pain, medication and alcohol misuse).

One of the pre-congress events was a workshop where the condition of Geropsychology in the Nordic Countries was discussed. This is a specialisation indeed needed nowadays, but actually non existing in Poland. Gathered assembly agreed about the importance of mutual support between the countries and associations as, despite the very adequacy of those specialist knowledge to the demographic trends in future decades, their activities still meet obstacles and misunderstanding. Participation is this Congress allowed to locate Project PRACTA in the wide context of European gerontology and, at the same time, to be a source of important inspiration for our future work. The closing ceremony was also the announcement of the next meeting of 23d NCG in Tempere (Finland) with the leading motto: Good Ageing – Better Society.

Poster of PRACTA project presented at the Congress can be downloaded here.