Everyone living in the Circumpolar North should have the opportunity to live a long
and healthy life. However, we live in an environment that can be challenging as we
get older. The physical environment may be difficult to navigate (extreme weather,
changing climate, high costs of living, etc) but it is important to remember that
the social environment also changes for us as we age. As more adults are choosing
to age-in-place and retire at home here in Alaska, we are noticing real gaps in our
knowledge about what healthy aging means to our elders and how we can achieve it in
our Arctic environment.
The Healthy Aging Lab at UAA works to understand the shifting sociocultural landscape
for aging adults and identify service needs to facilitate healthy aging-in-place.
We do this in a variety of ways, from Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR)
projects, to community-engaged courses in health sciences, to individual service-learning
projects—our work aims to benefit not only the student (and future geriatric workforce),
but the senior community as well.
While working towards a nursing degree, Kyla Turner has created beautiful art pieces throughout campus. She explains why UAA School of Nursing is the right choice for her and how she stays connected to her culture.
Nursing science graduate Tia Hale will serve as student speaker for the spring 2022 graduate degree hooding ceremony before starting her dream job at Southcentral Foundation in inpatient pediatrics this August.
“I never thought I would be involved in philanthropy, but after gaining an in-depth understanding of the program and working with Dr. Tina DeLapp, I decided to establish an endowment to the Recruitment and Retention of Alaska Natives into Nursing (RRANN), as a beneficiary of my modest estate.”
UAA alumni find many ways to stay connected and give back to their community, including nursing grad Tisha Benson, public health and ambulatory care nurse at Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
The UAA Healthy Aging Research Laboratory is partially supported by an Institutional
Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under grant number 2P20GM103395. The content
is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the official
views of Alaska INBRE.