Each summer, RTOERO funds early-career practitioners to participate in research-based summer placements at the National Institute on Ageing, part of a five-year, $100,000 commitment to the RTOERO-NIA Summer Internship Program.
Does where you age matter for health and longevity? Potentially a lot. And that’s something spatial analysis – a technique used to analyze data based on a location or geographic area – can help us understand.
That’s the skillset Ellie Maclennan brought to the National Institute on Ageing (NIA) when she joined the team as a 2024 summer scholar this past summer. “It’s really just looking at the ‘where’ of data, which we now collect a lot more than we used to,” Maclennan explains. “A country like Canada is fascinating to look at – how different regions have very different needs and people have different experiences.”
Maclennan joined an extensive NIA project exploring aging among Canada’s veteran population that was already well underway. The team was pulling together data from various sources to offer a comprehensive picture of veterans in Canada, and Maclennan was able to add a new dimension through spatial analysis. “In terms of raw counts, we have the most veterans in Ontario and Quebec because they’re our largest provinces. But when you break it down proportionally, that’s not necessarily the case,” Maclennan says. “The gross number of people per province and the relative nature also matter, depending on the question you’re exploring.”
Maclennan’s contributions are included in the project’s final report, Addressing the Coming of Age and Its Related Complexities Among Canada’s Veterans, available on the NIA’s website. It contains maps she helped create.
Analyzing data in this way can be helpful when considering where services may be needed. It can also be used to assess potential risk, which is how Maclennan applied spatial analysis as part of her master’s work on climate change and older adults. “I was trying to see if we found regions where there are more older marginalized adults, where does that overlap with more days of heat waves? Because those might be the communities that we want to target in terms of directing resources,” she says.
Extreme heat is one of the deadliest impacts of climate change, and older adults are at a higher risk of heat-related illnesses and death than other age groups. This is just one example of the potential for applying spatial analysis to aging-related topics – and Maclennan says the possibilities are significant. “If we look at the differences geographically, we can also see the shared needs – affordable housing, financial security, access to social connection. Those are overarching needs that we see again and again. But then we can also narrow in on the specific concerns for different areas,” she explains.
Maclennan isn’t new to studying and supporting marginalized populations and is well-versed in intersectionality. She was introduced to spatial analysis in a previous role with Egale Canada, an organization focused on 2SLGBTQIA+ people and issues. They looked at regional differences and experiences of older 2SLGBTQIA+ adults across Canada. At Egale, Maclennan worked on the qualitative side of the project, led by Celeste Pang. “I was interested in looking at the aging queer community because they’ve won so many rights for our community,” she explains. “Listening to the hour-long interviews and hearing their stories was really moving.”
Maclennan’s time at Egale led to her starting her graduate work. The summer scholars program at the NIA was a natural next step for her after completing the master’s. It offered the chance to apply her spatial analysis skills to more aging-related work, and she was introduced to more aging-related topics. “They’re doing a great job of staying in the know regarding what the media is talking about and different stories from across Canada. I learned a lot about different aging issues in Canada generally,” she says.
Her range of experiences and her interest in aging will serve her well going forward: she started a second master’s last fall, this time in urban planning at Columbia university in New York. With this degree, she wants to focus on putting the research into action. “I’m interested in continuing work with aging while also looking at how we plan for communities to be more resilient and prepared for climate change, disasters and extreme weather events. I see them as two overlapping issues. We have an aging society, and if we don’t prepare for that, it will be a crisis. Similarly, if we don’t plan for climate change, that will also be a crisis.”
Maclennan is grateful for the chance to be an RTOERO summer scholar. “It was such an exciting summer to work on aging-related topics in a meaningful and applicable way. It will definitely shape my future work, so I really appreciate it,” she says.
