Age Friendly Communities as Platforms for Equity, Health & Wellness
September 22-23, 2022
The Age-Friendly Communities Symposium brings together individuals from the Intermountain West to identify innovations and opportunities that will transform how neighborhoods, campuses, and health environments foster the independence, productivity, and wellbeing of older adults.
Symposium Highlights
The virtual symposium is designed to convene national and regional experts and key community stakeholders to envision age-friendly futures through knowledge exchange, generating ideas and expanding networks.
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Patricia M. D’Antonio BSPharm, MS, MBA, BCGP Gerontological Society of America |
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Mike Watson |
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Joann M. Montepare PhD RoseMary B. Fuss Center for Research on Aging and Intergenerational Studies at Lasell University |
Students are invited to contribute to a 24-hour ‘ideas’ competition focused on envisioning ways that neighborhoods, campuses and/or health environments can promote age inclusivity and intergenerational connections. All students who participate in the competition will be awarded free access to the symposium. A jury of regional stakeholders and policy makers will evaluate the entries and award cash prizes to winning teams based on the criteria of innovation and potential for transformative impact.
The symposium will produce new knowledge to understanding how age friendly neighborhoods, campuses and health environments serve as critical platforms for equity, health and wellness—particularly in response to the complex set of challenges facing the Intermountain West. A primary goal is to translate interdisciplinary research and knowledge into actionable, accessible resources for academic researchers, aging and health providers, community planners, policy makers, educators, and students. The symposium will produce the following resources:
Meet our Symposium Co-Leads:
As a licensed practitioner, Greer is committed to being actively involved from early phases of design through the close of construction on projects, working with cross disciplinary teams to translate ideas, concepts and needs into built environments.
Drawing from her background in practice, Greer focuses on health environments, resilient places and aging in her research and teaching. She served as Principal Investigator on a three-year, IRB-approved research project that studied the design of patient rooms on an academic medical campus. Her manuscript, “Variables and Outcomes in Patient Room Design: A Study of Design Hypotheses” investigates lived spaces in an oncology unit, and was published by the industry premier journal HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal. The work of this study, evaluating the performance of acute care rooms through the lens of patient, clinical staff and family interactions, involved intense, interdisciplinary collaboration, and will inform future design decisions that shapes the experience of healthcare.
Greer’s experience bridging between academics and practice has uniquely positioned her to build innovative disciplinary collaborations. She has created workshops and on-site learning opportunities for students who are interested in health environments and design, with topics ranging from mental health to aging. Greer has been awarded with special funding to document creative work and research on these topics. Additionally, she has served as an advocate for women in design, having been invited to serve as the faculty advisor by the Women in Architecture and Design (WIAD), where she hosted a speaking event with the internationally acclaimed designer Maya Lin.
Greer is an affiliate member of the University of Utah Center on Aging, and a peer reviewer for journals including Health Environments Research & Design Journal and the Gerontologist. She teaches design studios and seminars at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Dr. Edelman is a 2010 John A. Hartford and Atlantic Philanthropies Claire M. Fagin Fellow. Her research focuses on injuries occurring to older adults living in rural areas and the triage of injured rural and urban older adults to trauma care. She is Program Director of two HRSA workforce development grants: the Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program which integrates geriatrics and primary care training in Long-Term Care settings and the Nursing Education, Practice, Qualitymetric and Retention Program which seeks to improve the capacity and competencies of primary care nurses working in rural and underserved Utah.
Meet our Advisory Board Members:
She conducts research on the integration between well-being and social support and the transition into needing assistance in late life. She also conducts research on stress and well-being in family caregivers of persons with dementia, evaluates psychoeducational interventions for dementia caregivers, and the impact of staff interactions on emotion and engagement in dementia care settings. She also works on mental health prevention in other at-risk adult populations. Beth has received awards for excellence in teaching, research, and service, and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.
Beth integrates human connection not only in work, but also in her hobbies: socializing, cooking, dinner parties, book clubs, and a love for human interest stories are just a few of her favorite pursuits. In her spare time she enjoys camping, hiking and experiencing the outdoors with her family.
In 2019, Dr. Felsted was awarded the Rising Star Early Career Faculty Award from the Gerontological Society of America's Academy of Gerontology in Higher Education. She was also named one of the Nursing Alumni Scholar '19 List of People Shaping the Nursing Profession by the College of Nursing Alumni Association and Jonas/Veteran Healthcare Scholars.
In 2018, Katarina was appointed the Faculty Fellow of the Utah Geriatric Education Network (UGEC), of the Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP). Katarina has a strong commitment to excellence in teaching in higher education, and has earned her Higher Education Teaching Specialist designation through the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at the University of Utah.
As a gerontological researcher, Dr. Felsted's scholarly emphases include age friendly university networks, the use of complementary and integrative therapies to treat chronic conditions in older adults, and the impact of gerontology in higher education. Her research focus is mindfulness-based stress reduction as a treatment for urinary urge incontinence in older adult women, as well as a complement to physical rehabilitation of older adults in skilled nursing facilities.
Dr. Felsted’s book, co-authored with Dr. Scott Wright, Toward Post Ageing: Technology in an Ageing Society, was published by Springer. Katarina has published over 20 articles in various scholarly and academic journals. She has presented over 50 times at national and international conferences as well as invited lectures and speeches.
Dr. Felsted is president of Sigma Phi Omega, the Academic Honor and Professional Society in Gerontology. At the University of Utah, Dr. Felsted serves as the Wellness and Integrative Health Ambassador on the Health Sciences campus for the College of Nursing. Katarina also co-founded the Wellness Committee in the College, which contributed to the incorporation of Fostering Wellbeing as one of the five values of the College of Nursing.
Andy’s research lies at the nexus of urban planning, transportation, and public health. He has been working on two research streams to push the boundary of interdisciplinary urban health research. One stream is related to applying the concept of “cities as data” to understand cities as invisible grids and overlapping networks made up of vast quantities of data from sensors to crowdsourcing platforms. Another stream uses “cities as a living lab” to assess the impact and effectiveness of place-based approaches to addressing the wider determinants of health inequalities. His goal is to bridge the gap between urban planning and public health to develop evidence-based policy solutions to emerging health challenges linked to urban and transportation planning.
Andy previously held positions at the University of Oxford, the University of British Columbia, the Korea Transport Institute, and Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California and his graduate and undergraduate studies at the University of Washington.
For more information, please contact the symposium chairs Linda Edelman ( linda.edelman@nurs.utah.edu ) or Valerie Greer ( valerie.greer@utah.edu ).