CUIMC Research Symposium on Healthy Aging: Call for Abstracts

Dear Colleagues,

Last year, we were pleased to announce the launch of the CUIMC Healthy Aging Initiative, led by Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health and director of the Columbia Aging Center. This exciting new initiative aims to draw on the full clinical and scholarly expertise of our four health sciences schools to create new advances in healthy aging and longevity. Dean Fried and the initiative’s steering committee have been meeting regularly over the past year to develop a vision and plans for CUIMC’s role in advancing these missions. Based on consultations with faculty across CUIMC with related interests, the initiative is now launching several new projects with the goal of supporting next-generation aging research and creating equitable access to healthy longevity.

Prepared by the CUIMC-wide steering committee, the initiative’s vision statement is to extend health span and create healthy longevity for all. To achieve this goal, the initiative will forge a comprehensive understanding of healthy aging through new discoveries and their integration into universal prevention and care. This will build health equity and unleash the potential of our longer lives.

To that end, we are excited to announce a CUIMC-wide Healthspan Extension Summit, planned for late Spring 2024, and to share this call for abstracts. This symposium will span the range of CUIMC research disciplines, bringing together basic, clinical, and population health science with a goal to expand our shared understanding of healthy aging, its drivers, and opportunities for extending healthspan, and to create interdisciplinary collaborations. CUIMC full-time faculty, including early career investigators, whose research may contribute to the extension of healthspan or inform our understanding of how to achieve healthier outcomes in advanced age are encouraged to submit abstracts.

This half-day symposium will provide an opportunity to learn more about CUIMC’s broad and diverse array of ongoing research into healthy aging and to glimpse new possibilities and collaborations for creating better health in later life. Three sessions will be led by keynotes, each followed by up to four flash talks, and will culminate in an all-CUIMC poster session and reception.

Please complete this submission form by February 23 to submit your abstract for consideration. If you have questions about the symposium or your submission, please contact CUIMC Healthy Aging Initiative senior administrator Caitlin Hawke at cmh2197@cumc.columbia.edu.

Thank you for your interest in this important initiative. We look forward to your symposium submissions and hope you will join us for this very special research event.

Sincerely,

Katrina Armstrong, MD
Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences, Columbia University

Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH
Dean, Mailman School of Public Health
Director, Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center

Lorraine Frazier, PhD, RN
Dean, School of Nursing

Roseanna Graham, DDS, PhD
Interim Dean, College of Dental Medicine