Welcome to the Washington DC Center on Aging temporary informational site.
This is where we will post information about our organization until our official site is online at
http://www.washington-dc-center-on-aging.org

Gene D. Cohen Obituary

Washington DC Center on Aging — Areas of Interest

The Washington DC Center on Aging is a nonprofit corporation—a 501(c)(3) organization—founded in 1994.  Its major areas of focus include the following:

1. Functioning as a program without walls, the center is involving a national and international network of colleagues in the area of aging.  The center coordinates targeted think tank approaches to creative program planning and problem solving in the area of aging, working with a range of groups—including national associations and scientific societies, universities, art organizations, foundations, family groups, and governmental (federal, state, local) agencies, as well as others.

2. The center participates in and helps coordinate an international network of interested scientists and service providers working together to scout out de facto demonstrations that appear to be incipient innovations.  Efforts are made to link up researchers to evaluate what is potentially most innovative or promising in the programs identified.  The goal is to help speed the development and dissemination of innovation in the Field of Aging and to contribute to a more informed approach to public policies on aging.

3. The center is involved in innovative projects of an intergenerational nature.  These include initiatives that involve older people as a national resource in working with children and young adults.  Such intergenerational projects range from efforts aimed at involving older adults to improve the science education of children to efforts where older persons assume the role of key members of the informal support system in helping address health problems in their extended families or in their communities, to improving the education of children about aging.

4. Creativity in aging is a major area of focus, with attention to examining the nature, potential, development, and application of creativity with aging.  Areas of interest include the role and relevance of creativity to older adults; creative contributions of older persons to society as a whole; creative collaborative intergenerational relationships; creative approaches to developing programs that promote health and intervene with illness in later life, and approaches to evaluating these programs for the purpose of improving their quality and viability.

5. Efforts to promote public education about aging are of major concern at the center, with the goal of diminishing negative stereotypes and negative myths about aging among all age groups, while advancing understanding of human potential in the second half of life.

6. Coordinating and conducting research on aging, including descriptive investigations, program evaluations, and applied studies, are important in the center’s work.