Everyone living in the Circumpolar North should have the opportunity to live a long
and healthy life. However, we live in an environment that can be challenging as we
get older. The physical environment may be difficult to navigate (extreme weather,
changing climate, high costs of living, etc) but it is important to remember that
the social environment also changes for us as we age. As more adults are choosing
to age-in-place and retire at home here in Alaska, we are noticing real gaps in our
knowledge about what healthy aging means to our elders and how we can achieve it in
our Arctic environment.
The Healthy Aging Lab at UAA works to understand the shifting sociocultural landscape
for aging adults and identify service needs to facilitate healthy aging-in-place.
We do this in a variety of ways, from Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR)
projects, to community-engaged courses in health sciences, to individual service-learning
projects—our work aims to benefit not only the student (and future geriatric workforce),
but the senior community as well.
The UAA Hunger and Homelessness Support Network (HHSN) was created to identify and combat housing insecurities that students face. UAA Alumni and current Academic Advisor Jennifer Spencer is one of the three people serving as HHSN Chair. She explains how she uses her personal experiences with homelessness to help find solutions for students.
Fabrice Evengue is an epidemiologist with the Department of Defence. “I investigate patterns and causes of disease and injury.”. He got his start in public health at UAA, graduating in 2015 with a Master of Public Health in Health Practice.
When Summer Sweet started at UAA, she was drawn to public health. “I think it’s important to recognize the idea of environmental health, human health and animal health-everything around us as a whole.”. Sweet graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences 2022 and now puts her skills to work at UAA as a staff member.
Harris is the CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Alaska, matching adult volunteers with youth across the state in one-on-one relationships that change lives. It's the latest step in her community-focused career, and it all started at UAA.
The UAA Healthy Aging Research Laboratory is partially supported by an Institutional
Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under grant number 2P20GM103395. The content
is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the official
views of Alaska INBRE.