MISSION
Since 1974, the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging has been working to improve the lives of older adults through research and advancements in policy and practice. We work to ensure that aging is framed not as a disease, but as another stage in the life course.
We know that the way we age is influenced by the way we live. A good old age is a life with purpose and meaning, social engagement, a positive attitude toward aging and life, sufficient financial resources, and physical and mental wellness. People enjoying a good old age are assets to their communities. Our challenge is to better understand how to foster the conditions for a good old age for people who experience hardship and inequality because of cumulative disadvantage over the life course.
Our work crosses disciplines with a focus on community-based participatory research and the development and evaluation of new policy and practice solutions. We communicate what we learn to the people with the power to transform the lives of older adults: our colleagues in the field of aging and policymakers. We focus especially on our academic home, Hunter College, our diverse neighborhood of East Harlem, and our hometown of New York City.
History
To make it possible for everyone to age as well as anyone can.
The Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging, one of the country’s first university-based gerontology centers, was founded in 1974 by Dr. Rose Dobrof, a pioneer in the field of social gerontology. The Sadin Institute for Law and Public Policy, a Brookdale program, was created in 1977 by Samuel Sadin to train law students and provide continuing legal education to elder law practitioners. In four decades of work, Brookdale has supported generations of professionals and paraprofessionals committed to improving the lives of older adults while nurturing legal and policy experts in aging equity.
What I am thinking about is how we bridge what seems to me an inevitable distance between young workers and the older people with whom they work. – Rose Dobrof
