Message from MIRA's Scientific Director

Dr. Parminder Raina Scientific Director of the Labarge Centre for Mobility in Aging and the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging

Resilience, resourcefulness and perspective: older adults have a lot to offer about what can make for a happy, healthy life at all ages. But we all face new barriers as we age. Many older adults experience social isolation, poor health outcomes, limitations on mobility or unaddressed frailty — all issues we have seen amplified by the pandemic. MIRA researchers are working with older adults to draw on their deep well of understanding, across all areas of living a good life, while working toward solutions for the barriers older adults face.

This past year, MIRA has continued to support these relationships, between researchers and the community as well as between the needs of older adults and skillful research. In this report, you will see how we are funding exciting new projects while supporting established programs of research to continue their growth with successively larger external grants. As mentors and teachers, our members are training the next generation of aging researchers right here at McMaster and, as the host institution for the 2021 CIHR Summer Program in Aging (SPA), we shared that leadership with a national cohort of trainees too. Along with our partners at Dixon Hall, a multi-service agency in downtown Toronto, we are growing the MIRA | Dixon Hall Centre as a model for weaving aging research into the work of organizations directly serving older adults.

We are greatly thankful to Suzanne Labarge and McMaster University for continuing to champion interdisciplinary research that supports people to age well.