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.
Alisa Konishi-Therkildsen Speech-Language Pathology program director, shares her passion for education and research after recently earning her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction.
Emily McMahan, Speech-Language Pathology adjunct faculty, co-authored a new study showing real-world success in helping people manage tinnitus through a noninvasive treatment.
Nicole Blue has been part of the Seawolf Women’s Volleyball team since 2020. She’s a champion both on and off the court! The senior is pursuing her Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences with a focus in Speech Language Pathology. Blue shares some highlights from her time at UAA.
A partnership between East Carolina University and the University of Alaska Anchorage is bringing speech-language pathology rehabilitation services to remote communities.
Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) term assistant professor Megan Bennett discusses her excitement about teaching courses for the AAS in Speech-Language Pathology Assistant, a new degree option within the SLP program, and being a new faculty member 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.