From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/science/reframing-views-of-aging.html
By KAREN PENNAR
Published: June 25, 2012
Published: June 25, 2012
The
signal public health achievement of the 20th century was the increase
of the average human life span. Now, as that achievement helps raise the
proportion of the aged around the world, what once seemed an unalloyed
blessing is too often regarded as a burden — a financial burden, a
health care burden, even a social burden.
“It’s nuts,” said Dr. Linda P. Fried,
an epidemiologist and geriatrician who is dean of the Mailman School of
Public Health at Columbia University. “To assume defeat from what every
one of us as individuals wants suggests we’re not asking the right
questions.”
Findings from the science of aging, Dr. Fried said, should “reframe our understanding of the benefits and costs of aging.”
From
her perch at Mailman, a position she has held for four years, Dr. Fried
is pushing students, professors and a wider audience to ask the right
questions and ponder the right policies for coping with an aging world
population.
Dr. Fried’s mandate is to lead a school that will give
a new generation the tools to deal with global challenges to public
health, including environmental degradation, climbing health care costs
and the pressure of rapid urbanization. But she believes that research
on aging and health changes “across the life course” are central to
designing solutions to public health problems in the 21st century.
The
Mailman School is newly energized, with enrollment in the master’s and
doctoral programs up 26 percent over the last four years, and grants
from the National Institutes of Health up 12 percent in 2011 — a year in
which the overall N.I.H. budget declined slightly. Mailman’s curriculum
has undergone a major redesign to reflect a new emphasis on health
preservation and prevention for every stage of life.
Interdisciplinary
study will be required of all students. The curriculum, Dr. Fried
boasts, is “absolutely unique” among schools of public health, and has
generated a great deal of interest. Applications for 2012 admission to
the master’s program were up more than 20 percent from the year before.
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