Elderly care needs increased knowledge about LGBTQ+

Tsukasa Muraya from the Faculty of Design at Kyushu University has been successfully awarded a grant from THE KAJIMA FOUNDATION in Japan. This award is in collaboration with Anna Bratt from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Linnaeus University. Their research theme focuses on constructing a social system for the medical and nursing care environment for sexual minority elderly. This is accomplished through an international comparison between two countries.

In addition to above outcome, the duo published a joint article titled “A rapid systematic review of qualitative research literature and a thematic synthesis of older LGBTQ people’s experiences of quality of life, minority joy, resilience, minority stress, discrimination and stigmatization in Japan and Sweden.” The authors includes other than above two researchers: Ann-Christine Petersson Hjelm at Uppsala University, Matilda Wurm at Örebro University and Yoshihisa Hirakawa at Nagoya University.

Tsukasa has been a member of MIRAI since 2018 and had a remarkable beginning, with the MIRAI Ageing Workshop in Gothenburg being her initial point of research collaboration between Sweden and Japan. Their project, which started in 2021 through the MIRAI 2.0 Seed Funding Project, is among the successful endeavors within MIRAI to establish new international research teams and foster a deeper network of national researchers.