It's very well known that the world and
the United States are aging at a rapid rate.
In fact, National Institute on Aging
reports that Americans aged 65 and older will
double from 52 million in 2018 to 95 million in 2060.
So never before has there been a need
to understand longevity and
healthy aging so that we can help people
live longer, better lives.
What we wanted to do was focus
on what gets better with
aging rather than what gets worse with aging.
Because the usual notion about aging,
it's all gloom and doom,
physical health goes down,
cognitive function goes down.
In reality, that's only partly true.
There are things that get better with aging.
In order to better understand how to
improve aging for older people,
I think we need to start taking an approach of looking
more preventively and trying to
understand more about psychosocial aging.
I think a lot of the time we focus on biological aging,
or we look at the incidence of
disabilities or other diseases,
but we don't look at how our social environment and
our ability to interact and have relationships can
actually improve or change our health,
both physical, mental, and cognitive health.
What we know about people who are aging here in
our country is that they are brilliant,
they are wise, they are contributors,
they are collaborators, they're caregivers,
and they are great friends.
The work that we do at the center is very much
involved in helping to continue,
to expand those strengths that older adults have,
and help them live longer while
engaged in the things that are very meaningful to them.
We study the entire adult lifespan.
Because I don't think aging starts on your 65th birthday.
Aging starts at birth. So our studies,
go on from age 20 to more than 100.
We study people, of course,
both men and women,
people with different conditions,
including people with different diseases.
Because successful aging is not
restricted to people who are only physically healthy.
We're using things like
microbiome to better understand aging.
We're doing interventions to help people
increase and enhance
their resilience or decrease loneliness.
We're doing lifestyle interventions
with people in the community.
We're looking at biological markers of aging,
so we're doing blood tests.
We're looking at it from every possible angle.
We're doing bench research to better understand aging.
One of the important aspects
of taking care of older people is to
have a workforce that has expertise in aging.
The number of older people is
increasing all over the world.
Unfortunately, the number of experts in
aging is not increasing at the level that is needed.
Our training program started back in
1987 with one trainee.
We have grown since then to train
well over 400 individuals,
starting with high school students, medical students,
post-doctoral fellows, and clinical fellows.
So our training programs are nationally recognized,
they are making a great impact and
our trainees go on
to make a real difference in the field,
and that's something we're very proud of.
Community outreach and partnership is
a big piece of the work that
we do at the Center for Healthy Aging.
It's critical to the work we do.
Because we can do so much work here on campus,
but really what do we know if
we don't bring it out into the community
and partner with the people
we are trying to help and serve.
We have numerous partnerships,
not just here in San Diego County,
but across the United States and abroad,
and other countries around the world.
I do think though,
that the older people
that we've been studying in San Diego,
they are very interested in how to age well.
I think they like that we're not as focused on
disabilities or not as
focused on diseases that they're having,
we're trying to understand
more about their personal experiences and
their inner experiences to
actually improve their quality of life.
I think that's a novel approach for some of them.
That really is the most
encouraging and most gratifying part of the work
that we're doing something which is
meaningful with people for whom it is meant.
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