Northwest Med Partners Aging Analysis
by October 25, 2004 12:00 am 101 views
Bentonville’s Northwest Medical Center of Benton County and its Northwest Senior Health Center, plus the Schmeiding Center for Senior Health and Education in Springdale, are enjoying a new relationship with New York’s International Longevity Center USA. The center is affiliated with the globally renowned Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Michael Gusmano, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University in New York, is a senior researcher at the Longevity Center. He explained that Arkansas’ influx of retirees and its network of public and private centers on aging prompted interest in the state.
The Longevity Center also got a $75,000 grant from the Stephens Foundation Inc. in Little Rock to do the first phase of a two-year study on Arkansas. Gusmano said the goal is to measure the effect of the challenges and opportunities faced by older people here and what private and public entities have done to assist them.
NWMC-Benton County recently became a training ground for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the Donald W. Reynolds Center on Aging in Little Rock. All of the geriatricians at the hospital are adjunct faculty for UAMS.
The Longevity Center was created by Dr. Robert Butler, who also founded the National Institute on Aging. Gusmano said Butler was a big advocate of Little Rock’s Reynolds Center on Aging, and that Arkansas’ geriatric infrastructure really peaked the innovator’s interest.
“When the state of Arkansas decided to use a portion of its tobacco lawsuit settlement to create satellite centers on aging, [Butler] decided Arkansas would make for a real interesting study,” Gusmano said.
Because 20 percent of Arkansas counties have populations where the majority of residents are 65 and older, Gusmano said Arkansas mirrors what the Census Bureau estimates America will look like in a few years.