As part of Women’s History Month, we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8. This year, the Smithsonian is recognizing women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers by displaying 120 life-size orange statues of female scientists around the National Mall here in Washington, DC.
I’ve seen this impressive outdoor exhibit several times and it made me think of the enormous contributions of women scholars in the field of gerontology. According to our latest demographic information, women comprise 71 percent of GSA’s membership, meaning so much of what our Society accomplishes can be attributed to their vision and leadership.
Like all members of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), we’ve watched in disbelief as the man-made disaster of the invasion of Ukraine has unfolded.
GSA stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, the people of surrounding nations, and the global community in condemning the military invasion of Ukraine and calling for an immediate end to hostilities.
GSA is serving as a champion organization for Obesity Care Week (OCW) 2022, taking place from February 27 to March 5.
Obesity is a disease that continues to be stigmatized and many of those impacted struggle to receive any care, let alone adequate and appropriate care. OCW provides an opportunity to stimulate change. You can sign up for OCW alerts to receive the latest news, information, and resources that will be rolled out this week, and to take action in support of this important issue.
GSA President Peter Lichtenberg has a new video message about The GSA 2022 Annual Scientific Meeting experience. Watch to learn more about what’s in store for Indianapolis, Indiana, this November 2 through 6!
He reminds us of the March 3 abstract submission deadline and highlights the 2022 meeting theme, “Embracing Our Diversity. Enriching Our Discovery. Reimagining Aging.”
There’s a lot to be excited about as the GSA family convenes in November for our first in-person GSA meeting in three years. This is the first time it will be hosted in Indianapolis so allow me to showcase some interesting reports on what one Forbes article called “America’s most underrated city”:
It’s the time of year when the building blocks of the GSA Annual Scientific Meeting Program — your latest research results — are being forged. (Please be mindful of the March 3 abstract submission deadline!) But before a single block of the foundation can be laid, the scholarship must first undergo peer-review. And right now, your colleagues are in need of peers to help out in this regard.
Minimizing the ever-present risk of inadvertently activating negative stereotypes about older people begins with us and is determined by how intentional we are in our word choice. As leading scholars in the field, GSA members are constantly publishing research that becomes immortalized in publications. Fortunately, an expanding number of journal style guides now feature entries on bias-free language to support authors during manuscript preparation.
The important work of the Friends of the National Institute on Aging (FoNIA) is continuing in 2022, and for the next two years, it will do so with GSA Vice President, Policy and Professional Affairs Patricia “Trish” D’Antonio serving as chair.
Congratulations to Trish for being named to this important post! Our society was a founding member of FoNIA, which now boasts more than 50 organizational members. It’s a broad coalition of organizations committed to the advancement of health sciences research that affects older Americans.
Congratulations to the editorial leadership of GSA’s journals for taking a very proactive step in advancing GSA’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). They have published a new editorial, jointly appearing in the current issue of all of GSA’s journals, that offers guidance to all authors and reviewers moving forward — while also pledging to nurture the growth and recognition of scholars from groups that have been underrepresented in the journals.
The latest issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (PP&AR), “Addressing Systemic Inequities and Policy Deficiencies in the U.S.,” was overseen by the leadership of GSA’s Social Research, Policy, and Practice (SRPP) Section and is linked to the 2021 Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) theme, “Disruption to Transformation: Aging in the ‘New Normal.’” SRPP Past Chair Bob Harootyan, MS, MA, FGSA, and current SRPP Chair Philip A Rozario, PhD, FGSA, served as contact editors and authored the issue’s opening article.
“The unprecedented disruptions precipitated by the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and its disparate impacts, especially among communities of frail older adults and neighborhoods of color, are telling examples of persistent and insidious systemic forms of discrimination in society,” Harootyan and Rozario wrote. “During the same time, media coverage of police brutality and killings in the United States led to heightened demands for equity and justice for Black Americans and other marginalized populations. To that end, the 2021 ASM’s theme and the articles in this issue of PP&AR reflect our aspirations to learn from our past and reinvent a more equitable future.”
We are on the cusp of a major expansion to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world. Plans continue to move forward for the development of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which would be housed at NIH.
This new agency — inspired by the achievements driven the by Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)— is designed to “embrace bold and high-risk, high reward solutions with the potential to accelerate disruptive progress across an array of diseases and conditions and at levels ranging from the molecular to the societal.”