Columbia Healthy Aging Initiative to Host Healthspan Extension Summit

The CUIMC Healthy Aging Initiative—launched last year—will host its first Healthspan Extension Summit on April 19 at CUIMC. The half-day symposium will convene CUIMC researchers in basic, clinical, and population health sciences with a goal of expanding collaborative research toward understanding the drivers of healthy aging.

During the symposium, three sessions will be organized into keynotes, each followed by up to four flash talks and culminating in an all-CUIMC poster session and reception.  

The symposium is one of several new activities the CUIMC Healthy Aging Initiative will launch this year to support the growth of CUIMC research in aging.

“People around the globe have almost double the life expectancy they had in 1900, but longevity alone isn’t enough,” says the initiative’s director, Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health and the DeLamar Professor of Public Health. “If we can add health to longer lives, older people can be valued and stay engaged, contribute, work, volunteer, and be creative in unimagined ways.” 

Top priorities of the initiative are to address severe inequities in healthy aging across income levels and different racial and ethnic groups and increase health and well-being into the oldest ages.