Internal Partners

This year MIRA worked with many great internal partners at McMaster.

The McMaster Optimal Aging Portal is one of MIRA’s key strategic partnerships. The Portal sits within MIRA and MIRA leadership works closely with the Portal team and McMaster Advancement to identify and secure sponsors to support the growth and sustainability of this important platform. In addition, through MIRA’s partnership with Dixon Hall, MIRA is creating opportunities for the Portal to bring its content to underrepresented and underserviced older adults.

MIRA has further invested in the Portal for the enhancement of mobility content through short-form, multimedia e-learning in collaboration with the McMaster Division of e-Learning Innovation. The goal is to leverage the Portal to enhance McMaster’s reputation and generate interest from future sponsors or donors to provide revenue to sustain the portal.

MIRA collaborates with the Office for International Affairs in many ways — promoting MIRA’s research and engaging potential international partners to explore opportunities. This year, MIRA participated in the McMaster Global virtual showcase presenting on “McMaster and the Age-Friendly University Network: Learning and sharing with global partners to serve our communities locally.” McMaster Global is an annual event highlighting global engagement activities supporting McMaster University’s vision and mission to make global engagement and knowledge generation an integral part of the University’s identity and presence in Canada and around the world.

MIRA established an Age-Friendly University Committee in 2019 with a broad membership, including McMaster University’s service units for students, staff and alumni, major academic units and aging platforms and the McMaster University Retiree Association. This committee continued engagement in 2021 and met once in the past year to establish directed projects to work on collaboratively.

Partnerships with McMaster’s institutes and programs supports MIRA in its efforts to train the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers and trainees in the field of mobility and aging. Through collaborations with several groups and institutes at McMaster, MIRA has strengthened its support for developing Highly Qualified Personnel through co-funded opportunities for research trainees, while leveraging Labarge Centre for Mobility in Aging (LCMA) and MIRA funds. This has resulted in greater reach in nurturing and deepening interdisciplinary connections across the University. Over the last two years, MIRA has co-funded Catalyst Grants in aging with the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Pain Research and Care (IPRC) and funded a postdoctoral fellowship in collaboration with the McMaster Education Research, Innovation and Theory Program (MERIT) to evaluate MIRA’s certificate program in geriatric competencies and research on aging, as well as the Caregiving Essentials course that was developed in collaboration with McMaster Continuing Education (MCE).