How Your Support Helps Us Promote Longevity

​A LETTER FROM DILIP V. JESTE, MD

Why are some people aging more successfully than others? What can we do to promote healthy aging and prevent disability and disease later in life? How can we ensure that longevity is a norm? 

As a supporter of the UC San Diego Center for Healthy Aging and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging, you are helping us answer these questions and more through a broad range of innovative research, training, and education programs that touch the lives of countless older adults—locally and all over the world. 

With life expectancy on the rise, we are also increasingly battling chronic illnesses and making decisions about our health for which we are not prepared. With adequate knowledge and education, we could make successful aging a norm for everyone. From genetics to mental health, our researchers have been pushing the envelope and driving innovation to the field of aging over the past decades. This includes groundbreaking studies in accelerated and successful aging, cutting-edge robotics, and much needed work improving senior housing. 

There are a number of ways through which private donations can make a tremendous impact. One such example is the Successful AGing Evaluation (SAGE) study. SAGE is the only large-scale study of successful aging that considers the impact of positive psychological traits, such as resilience and wisdom, in addition to biological factors, providing a much more complete picture of older adults. The study findings were widely described in the media. Your continued support will help us extend this truly unique study—a major step forward in aging research. We are currently working on creating the SAGE 2.0 arm of the study focusing on genetics, neuroimaging, and microbiome. 

Another example of how your support can help is with one of our most promising ongoing projects, our research on wisdom. We are one of only few top research centers that look at wisdom as a biological function that could provide clues to behavior, brain function, and human evolution. Our studies aim to decipher how our brains compensate for physical aging and an unexpected evolutionary advantage to growing old, by gaining sage wisdom, which holds great promise to benefit society as a whole. Your generosity could help us extend this important program and fund some of the best and brightest researchers in the world. 

To find answers to the most intriguing questions about increasing the human life span, we work not only nationally but also internationally. Take our study of a group of 300 citizens, all over 100 years old, living in Acciaroli, Italy, a remote village nestled between the ocean and mountains on the country’s coast. The next step is performing a full genetic analysis and examining lifestyle behaviors, like diet and exercise. The goal is to apply findings to clinical practice here and all over the world. 

We strive to share our findings with the community and create a platform to quickly share knowledge with our supporters. That is why we have established a yearly Symposium of UC San Diego for Healthy Aging. Next year’s symposium will focus on our work on longevity, including early findings and take-home messages that everyone can implement into their lives. Several established international investigators will speak here in San Diego. 

You may be wondering how your gift can have impact on such large programs. The answer is that without “seed” funding from individuals like you, many of our research studies might never get off the ground. Your donation to the UC San Diego Center for Healthy Aging and Stein Institute for Aging will allow us to help you and your loved ones lead longer and healthier lives. 

Please make a gift—before December 31, if you can—to help sustain our successful aging programs in 2019. 

Thank you. 

Sincerely, 

Dilip V. Jeste, MD
Senior Associate Dean for Healthy Aging and Senior Care
Director, Center for Healthy Aging UC San Diego