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.
Earlier this year, Megan Eilers, a health occupations teacher at Hutchison High School in Fairbanks, was named a 2023-24 Milken Educator Award recipient, an honor considered to be the “Oscars of teaching.”
Ever since she was six years old, Panikaa Teeple, B.S.W. Social Work ’21, knew that spreading love was her life’s purpose. Next year, Teeple will have the opportunity to spread love internationally as UAA’s latest recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant, which provides students in more than 140 countries the opportunity to pursue graduate study and research abroad.
Dr. Tina DeLapp, a UAA emerita Professor of Nursing, and Pheobe Bales, a legal studies student, have received awards for their outstanding achievements in philanthropy.
Several Alaska state legislatures joined the annual Master of Public Health in Public Health Practice symposium to celebrate with faculty, alumni and nearly 40 students from the program.
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National AHEC Organization (NAO)
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Awards
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Alaska AHEC staff and directors traveled to Salt Lake City for the 2023 National AHEC Organization Biennial Conference. Olivia Bridges, Southwest AHEC Director, and Vincent P. Villella, Northwest AHEC Director, each received awards for their dedication to their unique and remote AHEC centers and programs.
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.