Yale School of Nursing (YSN) this week launched the new Center for Aging Well, a research and clinical hub that aims to redefine the optimal state of wellness at every age, during a celebratory event on Yale West Campus.
The new center will become a place where the future of wellness is charted, YSN Dean Azita Emami told an audience of students, faculty, alumni, and more from the university community and beyond.
We are here today to celebrate a different and exciting idea: the idea of nursing as a profession that takes the lead in promoting wellness and conducting wellness research.
And, she said, its opening marks a defining moment in health care and nursing.
“We are here today to celebrate a different and exciting idea: the idea of nursing as a profession that takes the lead in promoting wellness and conducting wellness research,” Emami told the gathering at the nursing school on Oct. 29.
The launch event, “Aging Well Together,” featured insights from respected leaders in aging, brain health, and disease prevention. Led by Miia Kivipelto, a world-renowned neuroscientist and inaugural director of the center, the Center for Aging Well will be a hub for discovery, innovation, and interdisciplinary research on aging across the whole lifespan.
It will also build upon the school’s century-long legacy of health innovation, said Kivipelto, who is also the Rodman Family Professor of Gerontology at YSN.
“We want to catalyze a new era of health and wellness by leveraging science, technology, and compassion to ensure and maximize well-being for all,” she said. “We know human beings are not defined by their age and diagnosis.”
In a panel discussion and Q&A on aging and wellness, attendees heard from Howard Fillit, co-founder and chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation; Matthew Clement, director of scientific strategy at the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative and director of health and life sciences at Gates Ventures; Rachel Whitmer, chief of the division of epidemiology and professor in the departments of public health sciences and neurology at the University of California, Davis; and Susan Reinhard, visiting professor for the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators at UC Davis.
YSN faculty also presented TED-style talks on related topics, including caring for older adults, pathways to early detection of liver cancer, and prevention for aging well.
