Project
VOILA
DuSRA-VOILA is the largest collaboration in the field of ageing research in the Netherlands. As of October 2019, nine institutions and eight private partners participate in a 5-year research programme of solutions which can contribute to ageing healthily as well as improving personal vitality.
stands for Dutch Society for Research on Ageing, VOILA stands for Vitality
Oriented Innovations for the Lifecourse of the Ageing Society. The programme is
co-financed by a grant of 6 million euros from The Netherlands Organisation for
Health Research and Development (ZonMw) and Health~Holland, Top Sector Life
Sciences & Health. Another 2.5 million euros is contributed by private
partners.
A wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary team of experts of research into ageing will work together on solutions that contribute to healthy ageing and increased vitality. The team aims to attenuate functional decline in seniors to allow them to increase the number of healthy years. The life expectancy of the Dutch keeps increasing, but with this longer life comes the risk of diseases of old age. Diseases that can often be delayed or even prevented by making life style changes in nutrition, physical activity, sleep and stress. Unfortunately, general life style interventions do not work equally well for everyone. There is much diversity in older adults in their health and frailty, and so far only limited research is available into individual functional decline. In DuSRA-VOILA, we have created a unique platform for structural, multi-disciplinary cooperation in the area of ageing with vitality, aiming to identify combinations of biomarkers of early signs of functional decline in seniors, attenuate decline and restore body functions at the organismal and cellular level to allow seniors to increase the number of healthy years.
At Wageningen University, we are mainly involved in Research Line 3 – intervention studies using lifestyle to understand the heterogeneity in response of older adults.