Course Description:
The world’s population is aging which has implications across society. Utah, which has the distinction of being the youngest state in the nation, is also seventh in growth of adults 65 years and older. The Age Friendly Movement supports the inclusion of people of all ages to actively participate in the world around them. This Praxis Lab will explore the impact of an aging population through lectures, readings and interactions with older adults and aging services. The Age Friendly Movement will serve as the framework to explore aging topics including healthy aging, health care delivery, community planning, education and sustainability of the workforce and ageism. Emphasis will be placed on the 4M’s of age friendly health systems – mobility, mentation, medications and what matters most – and how social determinants of health and health policies influence where and how people age successfully in Utah.
Day/Time: Thursdays 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Instructors:
Associate Prof. Linda Edelman (RN, PhD), Director of the Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, University of Utah College of Nursing
Associate Prof. Troy Andersen (PhD), College of Social Work, University of Utah
Faculty Biographies:
Linda Edelman, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor in the College of Nursing and Director of the Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence. She grew up on a farm in rural Kansas and the first of her family to graduate from high school. She has an Associate Degree in Veterinary Technology, Bachelor’s Degrees in Biology and Nursing, a Master of Philosophy in Immunology and a PhD in Nursing. She is passionate about aging, especially in rural communities, and her teaching and research focuses on improving the health of older adults. Dr. Edelman is the Director of the Utah Geriatric Education Consortium which focuses on improving the health of older adults by providing education to health profession students, health care providers and communities. She and her husband escape the city to explore rural Utah with their dog Ozzie as often as they can.
Troy Andersen, Ph.D., MSW, LCSW is the Executive Director of the W.D. Goodwill Initiatives on Aging and an Associate Professor/lecturer in the College of Social Work at the University of Utah. He received his Ph.D. in social work with an emphasis in developing proactive dementia care services for individuals in the early stages of the disease and other aging-related topics. Dr. Andersen is a dementia specialist clinical social worker at the Center for Alzheimer’s Care, Imaging and Research, a center that operates a multi-disciplinary subspecialty neurology clinic. He currently works with cognitive and movement disorder neurologists, neuropsychologists, nurses, and research coordinators providing medical social work services to patients with progressive forms of dementia and their caregivers and families.