The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) has received a three-year grant award from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health to establish the Geroscience Education and Training 2 (GET2) Network.

The work under the grant will be led by a multiple principal investigator (MPI) team consisting of GSA members George A. Kuchel, MD CM, FRCP, AGSF, FAAAS, FGSA, director of the UConn Center on Aging and Christine Thatcher, EdD, associate dean for Medical Education and Assessment at the UConn School of Medicine; and GSA Vice President of Policy and Professional Affairs Patricia M. D’Antonio, BSPharm, MS, MBA, BCGP, who is serving as contact MPI.

“We envision the GET2 Network Collaborative as an innovative academic-professional society partnership which will strengthen and broaden the impact of our efforts in geroscience education,” D’Antonio said. “As importantly, we also believe that the involvement of GSA, together with potential future private sector partners will help facilitate the longer-term sustainability of this important work beyond the NIA award.”

Kuchel, director of the UConn Center on Aging, and colleagues previously developed foundational curricular materials for medical students, Ph.D. students, and geriatrics fellows, as well as a Certificate in Geroscience Research Program (CGRP) for early-stage faculty seeking careers in translational geroscience research. The new NIA funding offers GSA an opportunity to build upon these achievements and lessons learned by enhancing the Society’s efforts in geroscience education.

“Aging is the main risk factor for conditions that jointly account for most morbidity, mortality, and health care costs,” Kuchel of UConn said. “Many gerotherapeutics targeting biological aging are in early-stage clinical trials. The discovery, validation, and implementation into clinical care of such transformational therapies will require the creation of a robust training pipeline to build a sustainable geroscience workforce.”

Goals of this new GET2 Network Collaborative will be achieved through the following aims:

• Enhance access to the CGRP via a centralized virtual-hybrid option based at GSA.
• Increase the geroscience workforce in terms of institutions engaged and research and clinical disciplines engaged. This will be accomplished in part through the creation of an innovative GET2 Geroscience Ambassadors Program.
• Systematically evaluate the quality, adoption and impact of all geroscience curricula with the assistance of educational experts.

The GET2 Network Collaborative builds on two other NIA-funded projects. Kuchel developed the first Geroscience Education and Training Network in collaboration with Iman Al-Naggar, Ph.D., of UConn Health, John Newman, MD, Ph.D., of the University of California San Francisco/Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Sara Espinoza, MD, FGSA, of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Robert Pignolo, MD, Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic, and Miranda Orr, Ph.D., of Washington University in St. Louis. To strengthen the geroscience researcher pipeline, Kenneth G. Campellone, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut, established the Education in Aging and Geroscience program in 2023.

GSA Director of Digital Programs and Events Eugenia Bachaleda will serve as a co-investigator on this new grant. She will leverage her expertise in digital media design, dissemination, and learning technologies, together with an ability to curate and deliver high-quality educational content that addresses the evolving needs and interests of the gerontology community.

The GET2 Network Collaborative is supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R25AG091038. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), founded in 1945, is the nation’s oldest and largest interdisciplinary organization focused on aging. It serves more than 6,000 members in over 50 countries. GSA’s vision, meaningful lives as we age, is supported by its mission to foster excellence, innovation, and collaboration to advance aging research, education, practice, and policy. GSA is home to the National Academy on an Aging Society (a nonpartisan public policy institute) and the National Center to Reframe Aging.