The CHA will work collaboratively with all the Health Sciences Schools and the Program in Public Health to develop and evaluate clinical and community programs that will be the basis for developing Interprofessional Education and interdisciplinary research projects. One area for collaboration is with the School of Social Welfare, which has done the groundwork for establishing a Center for Aging in Place in Suburbia that would convene residents, businesses, nonprofit organizations, service providers, researchers and local government with the goal of assisting older adults and their caregivers on Long Island to remain living in the community from retirement to end of life.
One of the research goals is to design and test technological and social innovations to support Aging in Place on Long Island and other communities. Along these lines, faculty from the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Renaissance School of Medicine, School of Nursing and the School of Social Welfare are working on a National Science Foundation (NSF) Smart and Connected Communities grant. Their project, “Connecting Communities Using Low-Cost and Secure Sensing Technologies for Smart Aging,” is developing and testing contactless room-based sensors to collect physiological and movement measures that will be analyzed with artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms with the long-term goal of installing them in older adult’s homes to support aging in place. This study combines both technology development and community engagement and represents a model for the interdisciplinary, multimodal research that will be the hallmark of the CHA.
