Roadmap for an Aging America

It’s a demographic shift with major reverberations: The number of adults 65 years and older is increasing, and the U.S. must fast-track research that addresses their needs.

That’s why the University at Buffalo is undertaking a $4 million initiative to deepen and bolster our understanding of aging, leveraging its wide-ranging expertise in aging-related research.

“As a city that is home to minority and aging populations growing more rapidly than in other U.S. regions, Buffalo is uniquely positioned to be the place where innovations targeted to these communities should be developed and implemented,” said Allison Brashear, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

The new initiative will allow UB to expand educational programming, enhance faculty recruitment and strengthen multidisciplinary research collaborations, all with the goal of generating solutions to address the physiological and societal elements of aging.

Many aging-related projects have been ongoing at UB for years, including:

• The Women’s Health Initiative, a 33-year nationwide study that looks at health outcomes in postmenopausal women, focused now on women ages 80 to 100 and older.
• A partnership between UB’s Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access and Erie County to integrate design and livable communities strategies across all county departments.
• The Team Alice project, a multidisciplinary initiative to reduce medication harm in older adults by deprescribing.
• An innovative age-reversal technology being explored by researchers in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Last December UB hosted the “Advancing Aging-Related Efforts” symposium to formally launch the initiative. More than 70 UB faculty projects on improving quality of life for aging Americans were featured, and Greg Olsen, acting director of the New York State Office for the Aging, served as keynote speaker to discuss Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Master Plan on Aging.

And this growing emphasis on aging-related research extends to the national level as well.

For example, the National Institute on Aging, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, is funding more than 7,000 aging-related projects for a total of $5.8 billion. This marks a doubling of funding in the past 10 years, and given UB’s extensive and long-standing engagement in aging-related research, the university is well-positioned to be part of that trajectory.