The Ohio State University Board of Trustees has approved the creation of the Institute on Aging to research how to improve elderly care and longevity.
Ohio State professor Christen Burd said she and two others, Dr. Ashley Rosko and Dr. Carolyn Presley, have spent the past two-and-a-half years trying to start the institute.
“We became really aware that there were a lot of different kinds of aging research going on in many different specialties here at Ohio State, ranging across almost all of our colleges,” Burd said. “Everything from engineering to social work to medicine. And we were really interested in uniting all of these different efforts into a single home where we can all be aware of each other's research.”
Ohio State already has a lot of ongoing research on various aspects of aging. Burd hopes uniting them under one institute will encourage collaboration across specialties.
“There are so many aspects to healthy aging and we really need to talk to one another in order to come up with the most innovative solutions that are going to work for our population,” Burd said.
Advances in medicine are also allowing Ohioans to live longer, however they’re not living healthier, Burd explained. She said living longer increases risk for things like cancer or mobility loss.
Burd added the institute will not only connect research teams within the university, but also help connect Ohio State with institutes at other universities. However, Burd also thinks OSU’s institute offers unique diversity in research.
“I think the difference here with Ohio State's institute is really the breadth of types of research that we can do here. We're able to cover a large swath of different types of search, from community-based all the way to basic sciences,” Burd said. “While many other institutes have really strong clinical, really strong social sciences or really strong basic sciences, to bring those all together into one unit is really something unique. I think Ohio State has an advantage there.”
The institute hopes to have its webpage up in the coming weeks.
