The Planning Committee is excited to inform you that the GVSU 15^th Annual Art & Science of Aging Conference will be held on Friday, February 28, 2020. The theme of this year’s conference is Rx for Healthy Aging. There will be a student poster and oral presentation session once again at this conference. In the past years, this conference has offered an excellent opportunity for students (both undergraduate and graduate) to present their research in a friendly atmosphere to a diverse audience that includes professionals who work closely with the elderly population, community members interested in learning more about aging, researchers from many disciplines, and students majoring in different fields.       

Each presentation can be either a literature review or original research in any area of aging providing information that may help understand the aging process and enrich the lives of the elderly. Students can work alone or in groups on their presentation. However, a faculty mentor will need to work with the student(s) to help maximize the students’ learning experience and ensure the quality of the student research presentation session. The poster session will start before the lunch break around 11:30 am (a free lunch will be provided to all student presenters) and will last slightly under an hour. Prior to the poster session, the presenter(s) of each poster will give a 5-8 minutes oral presentation of their studies in a breakout session designated to students researchers.

The size of the poster should be approximately 4’x 3’.  It will be displayed using an easel provided by the conference.  The student poster session will start before the lunch break around 11:30 am (a free lunch will be provided to all student presenters) and will last an hour.

To submit a proposal, please fill out the submission form for each poster. The forms are due by December 30, 2019. Please email back the completed form to Jing Chen at [email protected] and to [email protected].

Please see below the list of topics, that last year's attendees who applied for a continuing education credit in Social Work were interested to discuss in future conferences:

• Advanced care planning
• Aging homeless
• Aging & Medications
• Aging Veterans needs
• Alzheimer’s/dementia
• Best practices for home visitors
• Effects of trauma on older adults
• Elder law
• Geriatric Care – changing families role of creativity in healing
• Grandparents rearing grandchildren
• Holistic health options
• How to access social service programs for older adults (SSI, Medicare, SS Disability)
• LGBTQ issues concerning older adults
• Michigan laws regarding guardianship, what types of guardianship and what that means in making medical decisions
• Obtaining guardianship for adults
• Pain Management
• Policy changes for the aging population
• Post-loss caregiver life/ re-entry to own life
• Serving clients with chronic co-occurring concerns and/or high utilizers of emergency departments
• Suicide prevention/intervention
• Yoga for older adults
• Infectious Diseases/vaccinations for older adults
• Health promotion – diet; exercise; brain health, and more
• Caregiving – spouses/children/others
• Stress management/mindfulness
• Technology & Healthy Aging–Sessions geared towards older adults themselves –
  • how to use Shipt, Uber, FaceTime, Facebook
  • the role technology can play for social engagement,
  • smart home technology,
  • apps to track calories, or other health indicators;
  • app for Rethinking Dementia