UCLA, USC and Los Angeles County officials are collaborating to launch several pilot projects this fall with the goal of improving health resources for the aging community.
The Healthy Aging Initiative aims to advance and expand community programs that encourage middle-aged and older adults to stay healthy, with timely access to health care, social support and other services, said Dr. Martin Shapiro of UCLA, one of the leading coordinators of the Healthy Aging Initiative.
Aging was chosen as the project’s main focus earlier this year after several meetings with USC faculty and Los Angeles County officials, Shapiro said. Following months of planning and organizing, researchers and city officials are now ready to start the pilot projects.
“We talked about childhood asthma, cancer and so on. In the end, we decided to focus on the older population,” said Shapiro, a professor of internal medicine and of health policy and management at UCLA. “It’s something that’s not getting as much attention as these other problems.”
The Clinical and Translational Science Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, is set to fund the pilot programs, which will cost about $50,000 each to kick off.
Earlier this year, UCLA and USC requested applications from pilot programs to collect preliminary data about programs that support healthy aging. With that information, the initiative hopes to identify health interventions that can be applied in controlled studies of communities within Los Angeles County. Five pilot programs were approved – three at UCLA and two at USC.
“The first step is really trying to collect the information to understand what might be needed,” said Teresa Seeman, a professor of epidemiology and one of the leaders of a pilot project at UCLA. “We’re doing surveys to understand what kind of programs are already being offered to the population, and the types of interventions that haven’t come to Los Angeles yet that might need to be pushed.”
The five pilot projects will focus on different aspects of healthy aging. Seeman’s pilot project is surveying programs that support physical and social activities for older adults, while others will study mental health resources and vaccinations for the elderly.
Seeman said the projects will aim to collect data in the first nine to 12 months of the program. Based on the data, the teams will develop plans to improve programs in Los Angeles County. Along the way, the initiative hopes to gain additional funding from local foundations and the county government.
Shapiro said the pilot projects will all be completed within a year.
“We wanted UCLA to take its mission of helping others seriously, to do something to improve health in the community,” Shapiro said. “It’s a large range of problems but it’s relevant to everyone. Everyone will eventually age.”