Christianna McCausland
Last summer, University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) neuroscience doctoral student Abby Vigderman was in the Robo Care Center in Japan, where she attached herself to a “cyborg” exoskeleton by placing sensors on her body. She was then able to move the suit simply by thinking about the movement she wanted to make.
“I was floored by this invention,” said Vigderman, who had this in-country experience as a student in the Global Health Aging: Gerontology in Japan course with the University of Maryland School of Graduate Studies (UMSGS). “The company has many examples of how their products have improved the lives of older people and people with movement disorders or degenerative disease.”
The course in Japan is part of UMB’s master’s in gerontology, a new program that will graduate its first students in December 2024. Diane Martin, PhD, MSL, MA, associate professor and director of the Geriatrics and Gerontology Education and Research (GGEAR) program, UMSGS, explains that the MS program will develop culturally competent, knowledgeable practitioners as the United States heads toward having more people over 65 than under 18, known as a super-aged society.
“It’s projected that we’ll have about 74 million people in the U.S. over age 65 by 2030,” Martin said. “The purpose of the MS is to help our students and future professionals to understand the aging process and its uniqueness through a bio-psycho-social-spiritual lens.”
Japan has been a super-aged society for decades and is now the oldest nation on the planet. With fewer young people, it has turned to technology to both fill the void left when there is a smaller youth workforce and to create better quality of life for the aged — hence, the cyborg suit. It also makes it the perfect place to study a different approach to aging.
“We’re an age-segregated society; Japan is an age-integrated society,” Martin said. “We want our students to understand policies countries like Japan have thought about since the ’80s, like: How do we keep our adults engaged in meaningful work? What advances can better the older adult’s ability to age in place?”
Opening Students’ Minds
Given the multidisciplinary nature of UMB and the field of gerontology, the course in Japan is open to students like Vigderman who are not in the MS program. The course begins with three days of intensive learning stateside, including a trip to the University of Maryland BioPark to see how the U.S. is incorporating technology into its aging strategy. In Japan, students travel to the Kanagawa Prefecture, which has adopted a policy of ME-BYO, which complements medicine with more lifestyle-oriented approaches to elder care. Students tour housing complexes and nursing homes, meet with a World Health Organization representative, and tour the Robo Care Center.
“It opens our students’ minds to not using a one-sized-fits-all approach [to care of the aging],” Martin said. While overseas, students from different disciplines — social work, pharmacy, medicine, nursing — work together. “They analyze what they’ve learned based on their interdisciplinary teams, how they would approach something in the U.S., and how they might approach it differently based on what they learned in Japan.”
For Vigderman, a basic science researcher, the course was an opportunity to learn about aging beyond the animal models with which she normally works. “I have come to appreciate that aging cannot be understood simply from a basic science perspective,” she said. “Many solutions to ensure healthy aging do not require medicine. My job as a basic science researcher is to understand how I can contribute to our scientific understanding of aging while respecting that my work exists within a larger context that should be considered.”
Jaminette Nazario, MPH, a UMSOM gerontology doctoral student, had long been interested in Japan as a known “Blue Zone,” an area where residents don’t just live long lives, but also healthy ones. “As a gerontologist, I was interested in understanding practices that contribute to the existence of this phenomenon in Japan and how these insights could be applied to enhance well-being among older adults in the United States and Puerto Rico, where I am originally from,” she said.
Nazario was most impressed by the Chojyuen Nursing Home, where residents’ pre-meal activities include warmups and mouth exercises “reflecting their awareness of the continued importance of physical and oral health,” she said, and where the pool has a view of mountains and mimics the popular, relaxing hot springs called onsen.
UMB’s Age-Friendly Commitment
The burgeoning MS in gerontology dovetails with UMB’s commitment to becoming an age-friendly university, including recommendations on how to remove barriers to older adults navigating campus infrastructure. Additionally, UMB’s Academy for Lifelong Learning houses the Aging Forum, where aging experts from across the University’s seven schools answer questions sent to them from the UMB community as well as from across the country. It also hosts resources and videos created by the GGEAR program.
Martin explains that looking at diverse models will be essential to successfully managing our super-aged society, especially as we look at ways to reduce soaring health care costs. But, more importantly, Martin wants students to understand the importance of quality of life at all ages and stages.
“We should all have a meaningful life regardless of our chronic health conditions and age,” she said.
Read more about the students’ reflections during their Japan visit in this issue.
