A Meaningful Life - Interview with Dr. Marla Beuahcamp on Senior Healthcare and Interdisciplinary Approaches
- Grace (“Ace”) Ko
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
By: Grace Mi-Lian Ko
Biography: Dr. Marla Beauchamp is an associate professor, as well as a researcher, with experience at Harvard, the University of Waterloo, as well as the University of Toronto. She is the first-ever Scientific Director of the MIRA | Dixon Hall Centre in Toronto. Her research focuses on methods to keep seniors healthy for longer periods of time, applying an interdisciplinary approach to long-term health. To see Dr. Beauchamp’s complete biography, visit this website.
[This interview has been edited for brevity, and clarity: With some sections switched for better readability. ]
Q: Hello! Thank you so much for your time. Would you say that the project is focused on quality of life?
A: For sure: It’s the reality. People are living longer than ever before, but if you look at the research, the extended number of years are often not spent in good health.
So, that's what our kind of group is really focused on.
How do we improve the number of years in good health? To extend life span, but making sure we improve the health span. To improve the number of years spent in good health.
Q: For sure. And I guess this is also part of the reason why I want to interview for the Medical Humanities Journal, because it’s very existential, in a way.
Like, it raises a lot of questions about what is a good life? And how can we get more and more people to live that for longer and not just restrict it to younger people.
[...] a good life is always a life that has meaning, and is full of connections. Which also prioritises people's functional health: their ability to do what they value. And that's what we look at when we think of health aging.
A: For sure, and a good life is always a life that has meaning, and is full of connections. Which also prioritises people's functional health: their ability to do what they value. And that's what we look at when we think of health aging. That's why we focus a lot on this idea of functional ability, because it's thought that it’s the consideration of the influence of what people can do right in their environments and then also…
What do they want to do? What do they have reason to value?
And then, making sure that, as health professions, we focus on enabling people to do those things.
Q: Incredible! What advice would you have for students interested in this research?
A: I would encourage anyone who's interested in research on aging to go into the field, because I think it's incredibly important. We know that it's not a field that's going away anytime soon.
And you know, getting involved with, for example, as a first step, if you're a student at Mac and even involved with the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging (MIRA), meeting other colleagues from different disciplines that are doing research in the same field is really useful.
You can try and reach out to different different labs and see different labs and research groups to see if there are different volunteer opportunities.
But even if you go on to work in industry, thinking about collaborating with researchers… And doing research in industry in the area of aging, because there's a lot that we can do.
Q: What would you say the importance of this work is?
A: We're probably going to have an increased need for long term care as time goes on.
So we need to do better at creating systems in place. To support people in their homes. There’s a lot of work to be done, for sure. But there's a lot of good people doing it.
And that’s all for today! For more information on the incredible work that MIRA is doing for supporting this interdisciplinary research, visit https://mira.mcmaster.ca/
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