Dr. Pamela Elfenbein, Director for Center of Healthy Aging: At the turn of the 21st century, a new life stage emerged, young-old, 65 to 75, where for the most part people are healthy. They're not ready to retire. It's this new stage of life that this program focuses on.
Dr. Chaudron Gille, UNG Provost: The Center for Healthy Aging really came out of conversations as we were doing some of our academic master planning. We recognized if we approach the older phase of life as a medical problem to be solved, we exacerbate how rapidly people decline.
Mellisa Armstrong, Legacy Link Representative: I have five hundred and fifty participants on my program and all of them have lost their sense of purpose. And so really one of the main things we do with our program is re-empower them.
Dr. Chaudron Gille: That concept that we have of "sixty being old" is really not congruent with what we're seeing in today's society, but that's still the stereotype. We need to have a shift.
Dr. Pamela Elfenbein: A lot of the funding will go towards the development and the facilitation of programming that engage older adults in evidence-based programs that have been shown to work well in individual communities.
Mellisa Armstrong: There's a ton that we can learn from the young-old and society has to change, because if we don't, then we're going to lose all that wisdom. And we won't have a workforce to sustain our current infrastructure.
Dr. Pamela Elfenbein: If we allow the paradigm as it exists now, we are going to be a burden and that's scary to us. This is a big idea. We just had the courage to stand up and say we can do it.
Closing Graphic - UNG Center of Healthy Aging