On February 7, 2023, The Hill featured insights from AFAR Board Members Mark S. Lachs, MD, and S. Jay Olshansky, PhD, as well as AFAR Beeson scholar Thomas Perls, MD, MPH, on why there has been an increase in the number of older adults today, and why the population of centenarians has grown.
This increase in the older adult population, particularly among those with exceptional longevity, is the driving factor behind AFAR’s SuperAgers Initiative, which aims to provide a basis for understanding the biological and genetic underpinnings of exceptional longevity by studying individuals over the age of 95.
Dr. Lachs is the Immediate Past President of AFAR’s Board of Directors, a 1995 Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging recipient, and a 2017 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction recipient. He is also the Director of Geriatrics for The New York Presbyterian Health Care System, as well as the Co-Chief of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine and the Irene and Roy Psaty Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dr. Olshansky is an AFAR Board Member and 2016 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction recipient. He is currently a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a Research Associate at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Chief Scientist at Lapetus Solutions, Inc.
Dr. Perls is a 1998 Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award recipient. He is the Founder and Director of the New England Centenarian Study and a Professor of Medicine at Boston University’s School of Medicine. Dr. Perls is also the Co-Investigator of the SuperAgers Family Study, part of the SuperAgers Initiative
Read the article, “More People Are Living to be 100; Here’s Why,” here.
Learn more about the SuperAgers Initiative here.
