Grant funds national research consortium
By Lynette Murphy
A grant from a local foundation will help form a national consortium at WSU for research on older adults.
The K.T. Wiedemann Foundation of Wichita recently gave $67,779 to WSU's Center for Physical Activity and Aging to establish the National University Consortium. The center, part of the kinesiology and sport studies department, was formed in 1996.
The NUC will consist of research teams at universities across the world administering the Health and Lifestyle Review. The HLR, developed by a team headed by Laszlo Stumpfhauser, executive director of the Quality of Life Center at Larksfield Place in Wichita and former WSU faculty member, uses scientifically validated instruments to screen older adults in the areas of vision, hearing, incontinence, mental status, home environment and nutrition.
Already, the CPAA has been using the HLR. But the Wiedemann grant will allow Michael Rogers, director of the CPAA, to collect data via the Internet from other universities across the world that have similar relationships with retirement facilities in their communities like WSU has with Larksfield Place.
Having information from both the NUC – which tends to be people 60-85 years of age - and the National Consortium of Retirement Communities, founded by Larksfield Place - which, on the average, includes those 85-100 years old - will allow researchers a variety of subjects.
"Understanding the relationships between exercise, health and aging is essential not only to determine the effects of the aging process, but also to develop appropriate interventions that retard its deleterious effects," says Rogers.
"The NUC will be a way of generating a great deal of data and should provide an opportunity to test people regularly over time throughout the country and world."
