Congrats to the 2015-16 Kendal Scholarship awardees

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This year the BCTR awarded Kendal at Ithaca Scholarships, recognizing excellent student work in the field of gerontology, to Sylvia Lee, a sophomore in Human Biology, Health, and Society, and Arwah Yaqub, a senior in Near Eastern Studies.

"I am so excited and grateful to receive the scholarship. Whether I become a doctor or a researcher in the future, my dream is to help elders who suffer from chronic pain. Gerontology minor has offered me a new perspective on what my role at Cornell is and can be - I’m reminded that I’m not just a distressed pre-med student, who simply works towards becoming this person in the future, but that I’m given this opportunity to start living out my visions now, here on campus."

Beyond her coursework in gerontology, Sylvia worked in Nathan Spreng’s Laboratory of Brain and Cognition in the Department of Human Development throughout her freshmen year. There she focused on analyzing and collecting research participants’ memory and cognitive data by transcribing and conducting analysis on recalled autobiographical memories during fMRI tests. This fall semester, Sylvia began work in Corinna Loeckenhoff’s Laboratory for Healthy Aging, also in the Department of Human Development.

She recently joined Alzheimer’s Help and Awareness, a student-run organization, and received training to volunteer at Clare Bridge, a Brookdale Senior Living community that serves special-care needs of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Sylvia specifically has an interest in the study of neurodegenerative diseases and chronic pain in elders. She plans to pursue a career in medicine and research. Her current interest lies mostly in the molecular and neurobiological processes that underlie the causes of chronic pain in elders and how chronic pain is treated, cared for, and managed by healthcare providers and families.

 

"The Kendal Scholarship is a gracious opportunity that has helped nurture my passion for gerontology. The kind spirit and vision at the core of this award has been pivotal in helping me integrate other disciplines of study, most of which I initially believed were incongruous with the field. [the donor's] commitment to an education that elucidates the cultural, biological, and economic implications of gerontology, as well as experiential learning, is inspirational, to say the least."

Last year, Arwah served as a volunteer for MEDART, a committee associated with Cornell’s MEDLIFE student chapter. Through this committee, she provided company to residents of Ithaca’s Beechtree Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing. Many of these residents are sensory impaired, her group designed simple, weekly art projects to do with residents. Joining the Alzheimer’s Help and Awareness Club at Cornell also helped fortify Arwah's passion for gerontology.

Arwah joined Corinna Loeckenhoff's Healthy Aging Lab over a year ago. The lab research aims to better understand age differences in social relations, personality traits, and emotional experiences and to unravel the effects of these three factors in health-related behaviors and outcomes.

As an aspiring physician, she believes that an understanding of aging across the lifespan is indispensable to the profession.

 

The Kendal at Ithaca Scholarship

To foster a closer tie between Cornell and Kendal at Ithaca, the nearby continuing care retirement community, an anonymous Cornell alumnus and Kendal resident established a Kendal at Ithaca Scholarship in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.

Each year, the Kendal scholarship award goes to an undergraduate or graduate student interested in gerontology. Preference is given to a student who has some hands-on experience and is anticipating a career in the field.

The donor, who built a career in the corporate world after graduating from Cornell in the 1940s, wished to remain anonymous so that the focus of the scholarship is on the Kendal/Cornell connection. The donor pointed out that “creating a closer link between the two generations of Kendal and Cornell means more students have a chance to learn about the colorful, interesting lives and careers of retirees, and more residents have an opportunity to better understand students of today – their hopes, thoughts, and dreams. Greater involvement will be very stimulating for both.”

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Loeckenhoff reaps early career award in gerontology

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Corinna Loeckenhoff, director of the BCTR's Gerontology Minor and center faculty affiliate, has been recognized by the Gerontological Society of America with the 2014 Margret M. and Paul B. Baltes Foundation Award in Behavioral and Social Gerontology.

Loeckenhoff is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development, where she also serves as director of the Laboratory for Healthy Aging. She has published over 35 refereed journal articles, many in the flagship journals in psychology and aging. Her groundbreaking research revolves around age differences in socioemotional functioning and their implications for health-related decision making and outcomes. Recently she has focused on translating findings from laboratory-based decision-making paradigms to real-world healthcare settings.

She co-organized the 2013 Bronfenbrenner Conference (with Anthony Ong) on New Developments in Aging, Emotion, and Health, which brought together international experts to explore different aspects of issues related to aging and emotions and different approaches of addressing these issues. A book from the conference presentations will be published by the American Psychological Association in 2015.

 

Löckenhoff Earns GSA’s 2014 Baltes Foundation Award - Gerontological Society of America
Loeckenhoff reaps early career award in gerontology - Cornell Chronicle

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Meghan McDarby awarded 2013-14 Kendal Scholarship

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Meghan McDarby (HD, '14)  is working towards a minor in gerontology and is this year's recipient of the Kendal at Ithaca Scholarship. Meghan serves as co-program coordinator of Cornell Elderly Partnership, where her responsibilities include: fostering and maintaining visit relationships with local skilled-nursing and assisted-living facilities; working closely with academic and faculty advisors to arrange guest lectures; coordinating projects at the local nursing facilities and applying for grants to fund these projects; and facilitating relationships between Cornell students and older adults in the Ithaca community.

Meghan worked as a research assistant with Dr. Elaine Wethington between 2011-2013. She worked with Wethington and Dr. Cary Reid, Weill Cornell, on a project funded by the Translational Research Institute on Pain in Later Life about pain disparities in racial and ethnic minority older adults.  Meghan is currently completing her senior honors thesis, which is an attempt to better understand rural older adults’ attitudes about and knowledge of hospice care and how these individual-level factors may play a role in explaining the disparity in use of hospice in rural areas as compared to urban areas. For this research process, she is performing qualitative interviews with older adults in Tompkins County (Trumansburg, Groton, Ithaca, and Lansing).

Meghan visits weekly with a Kendal at Ithaca resident, who she met in January 2012 during an internship. Additionally, she has other regular visits with local elders and works with others, assisting with exercise and daily life. She recently completed a volunteer training program at Hospicare and has just begun volunteering there.

Of her work in gerontology at Cornell, Meghan says,

"... gerontology is the foundation of my future career. I aspire to be a geriatrician in a rural, under-served area in the northeast United States. I have a profound interest in end-of-life care alternatives, holistic care approaches, as well as increasing patient empowerment and health literacy for older adults. The gerontology minor has been integral in fostering the development of my long-term goals; the pairing of my individual extra-curricular experiences with the knowledge I have learned in the classroom has woven the supportive framework as I pursue my career in the field of medicine."

 

The Kendal at Ithaca Scholarship

To foster a closer tie between Cornell and Kendal at Ithaca, the nearby continuing care retirement community, an anonymous Cornell alumnus and Kendal resident established a Kendal at Ithaca Scholarship in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.

Each year, the Kendal scholarship award goes to an undergraduate or graduate student interested in gerontology. Preference is given to a student who has some hands-on experience and is anticipating a career in the field.

The donor, who built a career in the corporate world after graduating from Cornell in the 1940s, wished to remain anonymous so that the focus of the scholarship is on the Kendal/Cornell connection. The donor pointed out that “creating a closer link between the two generations of Kendal and Cornell means more students have a chance to learn about the colorful, interesting lives and careers of retirees, and more residents have an opportunity to better understand students of today – their hopes, thoughts, and dreams. Greater involvement will be very stimulating for both.”

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Talks at Twelve: Cary Reid, Kavita Ahluwalia, & Rachel Sherrow, Tuesday, May 21, 2013

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Using Community-Based Participatory Research to Address Oral Health in NYC Meals-on-Wheels Recipients
Cary Reid, Kavita Ahluwalia, & Rachel Sherrow

Tuesday, May 21, 2013
12:00-1:00PM
Beebe Hall, 2nd floor conference room

This talk is open to all. Lunch will be served. Metered parking is available in the Plantations lot across the road from Beebe Hall.

This is a BCTR Innovative Pilot Study Grant recipient talk.

Community-based senior services, such as case management, transportation, senior centers, etc., are designed to help the growing number of community-dwelling older adults maintain independence and prevent institutionalization. Meals-on-Wheels (MOW) is one such service, designed to provide food and nutrition for a particularly vulnerable subset of older adults -- those who are unable to prepare meals due to cognitive and/or physical impairments and who, without the service would be unable to remain in the community. Although MOW has frequent household contact with recipients, has been in existence for almost 40 years, and serves one million Americans daily, there has been little systematic examination of its potential utility to provide health promotion/disease prevention messages and/or interventions, which may prove to be critical for the prevention of future institutionalization. We have chosen to address oral health because it is central to food consumption, and is important to ensuring the MOW delivers meals recipients can actually eat. The goal of this on-going work is to bring together MOW stakeholders and researchers to collaborate on capacity-building and future funding initiatives to translate and integrate evidence-based oral health promotion and disease prevention into the MOW systems. This work, uses a community-academic partnership, and has resulted in the development of a number of policy changes that will be implemented city-wide. Pilot development, implementation and testing of health promotion/disease prevention interventions that target NYC meal recipients is underway, and the partnership is actively seeking additional funding to sustain and expand this work.

Cary Reid, Weill School of Graduate Medical Sciences, Cornell University
Kavita Ahluwalia, College of Dental Medicine, Columbia University
Rachel Sherrow, Citymeals-on-Wheels

 

Dr. Cary  Reid is an Associate Professor and Director of the Office of Geriatric Research in the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.  Dr. Reid obtained his medical degree from the University of South Carolina. He subsequently completed internship, residency, and chief-residency training at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. He completed fellowship training in both clinical epidemiology and geriatric medicine at Yale University. Dr. Reid taught, conducted research at Yale University before joining the faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College in 2003.  Dr. Reid has received many research awards over the years, including a Robert Wood Johnson Generalist Physician Scholar Award and a highly coveted Paul Beeson Faculty Scholar on Aging Research Award. He is a section editor of the journal Pain Medicine and  currently directs an NIH-funded multi-institutional center called “The Translational Research Institute on Pain in Later Life” or TRIPLL. The center supports translational research on pain and aging in New York City. Institutional partners include Weill Cornell, Columbia University, Hospital for Special Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Cornell University (Ithaca campus), Council of Senior Centers & Service of NYC, Inc. and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. His research focuses on improving the management of pain among older persons. Current projects include testing non-pharmacologic strategies for pain among older persons in both clinical and non-clinical settings, identifying barriers to the use of self-management strategies for pain, and examining optimal strategies for managing pain across ethnically diverse populations of older persons. Additional areas of interest include the epidemiology and treatment of substance use disorders in older persons.

Kavita P. Ahluwalia is an Associate Professor of Clinical Dental Medicine at Columbia University’s College of Dental Medicine Dr. Ahluwalia is particularly interested in working with communities to address oral health in vulnerable populations. She has successfully used community-based participatory research principles to find creative and unexpected ways of integrating oral health and healthcare into existing care systems to develop sustainable programs that bridge the divide between dentistry and other health professions. Dr. Ahluwalia has received funding from the National Institute on Aging, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Federal Emergency Management Agency, American Legacy Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the New York State Department of Health. She is currently Principal Investigator on a study funded by the New York State Department of Health to assess oral care delivery for people with dementia, and was recently funded by the National Institute on Aging to address oral pain and ability to eat among older adults receiving Meals-on-Wheels in NYC. She is also working with Columbia University’s Earth Institute to address oral health among poor rural children in two districts in India. Dr. Ahluwalia, who is Director of the College’s DDS/MPH program, is an active member of Isabella Homecare’s Steering Committee and a member of the Harlem Health Promotion Center’s Health Advisory Board. She received a DDS and MPH from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and completed a residency in Dental Public Health at the VA in Perry Point, MD.

Rachel Sherrow is Chief Program Officer of City meals-on-Wheels where she works to provide a continuum of meals on wheels and companionship for home bound elderly throughout the year. Although the beginning of her career was spent working with youth, for the past fifteen years, she has advocated for the elderly of New York City at various not-for profits. Rachel has worked for The New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, The Educational Alliance, and the Henry Street Settlement. She received her Master’s Degree in Social Work from Yeshiva University. She is currently working to prevent hunger among the most at risk clients Citymeals–on-Wheels serves.

 

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