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The next convening of the National Advisory Council on Aging (NACA) is taking place with an open portion of the meeting accessible via live videocast from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, September 15. This is a convenient way to get a birds-eye view of what’s been happening, and what’s in store, at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), with which many GSA members have long-standing relationships.
I currently serve as a member of the council, which convenes three times annually. It reviews new proposed concept clearances, reviews applications for grants and cooperative agreements for research and training, and recommends approval of applications for projects that show promise, along with other duties.
As we wrap up the 2021 National Immunization Awareness Month, it’s also back-to-school season. There are many debates taking place right now about vaccine requirements and masking in local school districts and across campuses. And as many GSA members are based in university settings, they may find themselves engaged in dialog with people approaching these issues from many perspectives — not to mention with family and friends as well!
August is National Immunization Awareness Month — led by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — so it’s a good time to turn our personal attention to the incredible arsenal of life-saving vaccines we have at our disposal.
With our collective focus almost exclusively on COVID-19 vaccines right now, let’s not forget that flu season will soon be here as well. Last year, the flu shot was reassuring to many as it was a proactive step we could take to protect our well-being in a time of great uncertainty. Thanks to the power of the vaccine, combined with widespread mask use and physical distancing in place to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, we ended up experiencing the mildest flu season on record.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the largest biomedical research agency in the world — has a new chief officer for scientific workforce diversity, and it’s a member of the GSA community: Marie Bernard, MD, FGSA, FAGHE!
This leadership appointment is well-deserved for someone as experienced and credentialled as Dr. Bernard, who for the last 13 years has served as deputy director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA). If you haven’t done so, read our recent interview with her in the July issue of Gerontology News. You’ll learn why she was the ideal candidate for this position, which reports directly to NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD.
The latest journal impact factors are in, and I’m proud to say that GSA’s journals have reached all-time highs. This is a testament to the hard work and scholarship that the GSA community has produced, from authors to reviewers to editors. Peer-reviewed journals are how fields of inquiry have conversations among themselves, and impact factor is a leading metric we look to gauge success.
GSA’s deep commitment to a caring and competent workforce that supports our aging population was perhaps most visible when it served as a co-founder of the Eldercare Workforce Alliance in 2009. This alliance was formed in response to the landmark Institute of Medicine report “Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce.”
Scientific research in this area continues to develop, and now GSA scholars are in the spotlight again with the latest issue of our journal The Gerontologist, titled “Workforce Issues in Long-Term Care.”
I had the opportunity to showcase GSA’s work on Reframing Aging during a recently convened Age-Friendly Ecosystem Summit hosted by The George Washington University’s Center for Aging, Health and Humanities. The two-day meeting included age-friendly success stories from the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Regional leaders advancing age-friendly programs in the District of Columbia, Montgomery County and Hyattsville, Maryland, and Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia, provided examples of how the many facets of the Age-Friendly Ecosystem are evolving.
GSA has teamed-up with several other organizations to address the challenges presented by the bacterium Clostridioides difficile — or C. difficile as it’s commonly abbreviated. Over the past year, I have had the privilege of representing GSA on the Steering Committee of the C. difficile Awareness Initiative, which was formed in response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deeming this infectious disease an urgent public health threat.
When the pandemic unfolded last year, my admiration for the GSA membership was once again reaffirmed when our newly formed GSA COVID-19 Task Force and existing National Adult Vaccination Program Workgroup began rolling out an impressive array of resources to help all of us make sense of emerging information about COVID-19 and its impact on older adults.
And it’s important to know their work is continuing, and updates have been made to existing tools as we gain new knowledge, particularly in the area of vaccines.
The National Advisory Council on Aging (NACA), which meets three times annually, will convene again on Wednesday, May 12. Members of the scientific community and public are invited to join the open portion of the meeting, which will take place via live videocast from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET. The agenda is available to view online.
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