The Stony Brook Center for Healthy Aging (CHA) was created to improve the care of people as they age and to address their primary goals: to be able to live at home as they age and to maintain a high quality of life. This goal has never been more important. There’s a severe shortage of geriatricians in the United States as physicians retire and fewer medical students are entering geriatrics as a specialty. At the same time, the number of New Yorkers age 65-plus has increased by 26 percent over the past decade. Suffolk County is particularly impacted: The median age in the county, 42 years, is 10 percent higher than the national average. The 65-plus age group has increased 33 percent from 2010 to 2021, and people over age 90 are the fastest growing age group as a percentage. Clearly, new approaches will be needed to care for the growing number of aging people.
The approach of the CHA is to develop a better understanding of the biology, physiology, sociology and psychology of aging through research and innovation. We’ll use our discoveries to develop better methods for earlier diagnosis of problems associated with aging and better and earlier intervention, as well as improved treatments, which could include devices and medications. There’s also an opportunity for interprofessional education as multiple professions — including physicians, nurses, dentists, social workers, occupational therapists and physical therapists — can work as a team to care for the aging. The center will be led by the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, but it is a campus-wide initiative. The foundation for the CHA comes from Stony Brook’s strong academic programs and research initiatives. For instance, using biomedical engineering and artificial intelligence (AI), our researchers are developing technologies to help people age at home.
Stony Brook researchers are currently focused on ways to help slow the progression of age-related complications by developing new drugs, therapies and technologies. They also work to identify who's at risk for age-related diseases in order to intervene earlier and prevent the deleterious complications of aging. The focus of the CHA will be research on aging across the continuum of basic, translational, clinical and health services research. By working with an Age-Friendly Health System, which is focused on mentation (mental activity), mobility, medication and other areas that matter to an aging population, we will track outcomes and gain information that will lead to further research and clinical trials.
All of this, in addition to the clinical need, especially in Suffolk County, has been our imperative in developing the CHA.
