The Brown University School of Public Health recently received a $3.8 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to launch a new center focused on the impact of climate change on aging communities.
The new Climate, Health and Aging Innovation and Research Solutions for Communities center, abbreviated as CHAIRS-C, will collaborate with multiple existing initiatives on campus to research the adverse effects of climate change on the public health of elderly populations, according to Theresa Shireman, who directs the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research. Some collaborators will include the Shireman’s center and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.
“With tremendous pressure to mitigate climate change, this new award will formally link these and other established entities to foster new partnerships aligning climate science with healthy aging in a community-focused laboratory,” Shireman wrote in an email to The Herald.
The establishment of this center is driven by the increasing relevance of the interactions between gerontology, climate change and public health. As the effects of climate change become more intense, elderly individuals are particularly vulnerable due to “cognitive limitations, medical comorbidities and high use of medications linked to adverse heat events,” Shireman explained.
CHAIRS-C aims to address these issues through policy-oriented “actionable solutions,” which can only be achieved by “effective interactions with community partners, governmental partners and their policymakers,” Shireman added.
According to Emily Gadbois, an assistant professor of health services, policy and practice, the grant encourages the center to collaborate with “organizations that provide services to older adults and those that are focused on environmental health and justice to ensure that our efforts (are) consistent with community needs and resources.”
CHAIRS-C will also work with a new initiative at Brown, “Equitable Climate Futures.” Elizabeth Fussell, the co-faculty director of ECF, explained that the program is “more broadly focused on climate change” in comparison to the new center. But, both initiatives have similar goals: emphasizing the importance of community involvement and climate equity, Fussell explained.
According to Fussell, ECF and CHAIRS-C also share a focus on cross-disciplinary research. That work requires the combined efforts of “scholars from multiple disciplines” and “holders of community and Indigenous knowledge,” Fussell said. Both programs aim to foster a close partnership with Indigenous people and communities, whose voices are often “marginalized in academic research,” through workshops, training sessions and co-designed research, she explained.
For Allan Just, an associate professor of environment and society, the new center will strengthen the University’s agenda of working with local and regional communities and partners to address the most pressing needs. This process will begin by first addressing “the challenges of heat and air pollution for healthy aging,” Just wrote in an email to The Herald.
Both Shireman and Just expressed their excitement over the new center, highlighting how its collaborative nature will help advance the scientific goal of understanding the impacts of climate change across multiple populations.
