Dr. Cordula Endter, deputy professor at the HSZG, has received the prestigious Cäcilia Schwarz Award for Innovation in Elderly Care from the German Association.
At its general meeting, the German Association for Public and Private Welfare awarded its seventh "Cäcilia Schwarz Prize for Innovation in Care for the Elderly", endowed with a total of 10,000 euros. Dr. Cordula Endter, deputy professor of social gerontology at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the HSZG, was awarded the prize for her dissertation "Assisted Ageing. The development of digital technologies for and with older people" and Dr. Henrike Voß, sports and exercise gerontologist from Heidelberg.
Thepatron of the 2021 sponsorship award is Christine Lambrecht, Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences congratulates Dr. Cordula Endter on this award.
The process of digitalization is also influencing and changing the everyday lives of older people. Dr. Cordula Endter examines the use and development of technical assistance systems for older people from a cultural anthropological perspective. Whether digital products and services support independence in old age and can be used beneficially depends crucially on whether older people can use them competently and have access to the internet, even in special forms of housing. The German government's Eighth Ageing Report therefore calls for all older people to be given access to the internet and digital devices and for older people to be addressed more strongly in digital strategies.
Dr. Cordula Endter's work expands this perspective to include issues relating to the participation of older people in the development of digital technologies and services. On the basis of several years of field research, she analyzes how images of age and perceptions of age among the relevant actors in funding policy, technology development and among older users themselves affect the development and use of digital technologies. As a result, Dr. Cordula Endter succeeds in demonstrating that, in addition to acquiring skills, older people also need to be involved in the development of technology.
The dissertation "Assisted Ageing" has been published in the series "Ageing and Society" by Springer VS Verlag.
The Cäcilia Schwarz Award recognizes important scientific work whose findings contribute to enabling older people to live independently for a long time. The German Association for Public and Private Welfare (Deutscher Verein für öffentliche und private Fürsorge e.V.) awarded the Cäcilia Schwarz Prize for Innovation in Elderly Care for the first time in 2005.
The prize was made possible by a donation from the estate of the person who gave the prize its name, whose aim was to help improve the lives of older people. The German Association is funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.
