Community Engagement
We developed numerous partnerships over the past 4 years; some included in the original proposal based on cooperative agreements for faculty and course sharing and additional external partnerships focused on programmatic, mentoring, internship/capstone opportunities for faculty, students, and the community. The breadth and depth of these partnerships have provided a strong foundation for our program and created a genuinely cross-campus interdisciplinary effort. In addition, these relationships provide high-quality and cost-effective relationships for our faculty and our students. Further, these partnerships have established GU Aging & Health as an essential player locally and globally. We highlight a few of these internal partnerships here.
Age-Friendly DC
Gail Kohn, one of our adjunct faculty, is the Coordinator for Age-Friendly DC a division of Mayor Bowser’s office. We have partnered with Age-Friendly DC on a number of projects including internship and post-graduation job placements, mentoring for students, seminar speakers.
Birmingham Green
Creative Aging Innovation Forums
Aging & Health (AGHL) is working with Mather and the Kennedy Center, Office of Accessibility, to produce a series of Creative Aging Innovation Forums with over 60 industry leaders, including representatives from the National Institutes of Health, the National Endowments for the Arts, the Milken Institute on Aging and the M. I. T. Age Lab, across the country to leverage innovations realized during the pandemic utilizing the arts and humanities. These forums will result in the publication of a white paper as well as a creative aging incubator.
Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC)
DC Office on Aging (DCOA)
George Washington University Center on Aging, Health, and Humanities
(Dr. Melissa Batchelor, Director; Dr. Pamela Saunders, Center Associate Director of Geriatric Education) The AGHL Program co-hosted the AARP Social Innovation Challenge in October 2021. This program was attended by over 100 people including many AGHL faculty and students. This event has resulted in new grant proposals by local county government agencies.
Goodwin House (GH)
(Rob Liebrich, CEO) The AGHL Program collaborates with GH for education and community outreach. Students learn as well as teach residents of GH as part of AGHL 505 Psychology of Aging.
IONA House
LCS Foundation
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Office of Accessibility
(Betty Siegel, JD, Director) An office dedicated to providing cultural access across all demographics serving people with disabilities regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, and other mitigating factors.
Mather
A nonprofit organization with a research institute dedicated to improving the lives of older people across the country and is a global model. Mather is a source of strong partnership and visibility that may provide research, funding, and recruitment opportunities.