Message from Director
Welcome to the LSU Healthy Aging Research Center (HARC). Please explore our Center’s website in depth to learn more about our commitment to older adults and their quality of life.
Our Focus on Healthy Aging
HARC aims to impact positively the health of vulnerable older adults through interdisciplinary applied research: to improve the health, wellbeing, and independence of older adults and their caregivers. We focus on physiological, psychological, behavioral, social, and environmental processes involved in aging.
Our Integrated, Meaningful Research
The HARC research portfolio affirms a record of funding from an array of sources: public and private sectors, geographically diverse support among local, state, and national sources. We conduct health and social science research that is ethical and worthy of rigorous pursuit, with implications of purpose to integrated health care professionals and their older constituencies. By increasing modern understanding of senescent effects and societal impediments to healthful aging, and with interventive scientific inquiry, we strive to abate and eliminate biopsychosocial health disparities among older adults.
Engagement with Community
HARC addresses the challenges faced by older adults through strategic partnerships with health care, human service, and academic organizations. We evaluate interventions and programs for health care organizations and policy makers. Further, in collaboration with these organizations, HARC instructs health care providers to improve service quality, delivery, and utilization.
Our world’s population is aging rapidly. By year 2050, older adults will comprise 22% of the global population.[1] In the United States, by year 2060, the number of older adults is projected to double to 95 million.[2] A plethora of internal and external factors contribute to a person’s health and wellbeing as they age. Through funded research, community partnerships, education, and policy changes, HARC examines these factors, along with interventions to enhance the health and functioning of older adults and their families as they age in place.
Scott E. Wilks, PhD, LMSW
Director, Healthy Aging Research Center (HARC)
W. H. LeBlanc LSU Alumni Association Professor
Louisiana State University
Fellow, The Gerontological Society of America
John A. Hartford Foundation Faculty Scholar in Geriatric Social Work
[1] Data from World Health Organization: Ageing and Health Key Facts
[2] Data from U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, Administration on Aging: Profile of Older Americans