TCU launches healthy aging minor to help address needs of aging population

Fort Worth, TX

8/14/2008

To help address the needs of the growing aging population, TCU has developed an interdisciplinary minor in healthy aging, through the Center for Healthy Aging. The Interdisciplinary Healthy Aging Minor will prepare TCU graduates to understand the heterogeneity and complexity of the older adult population, by challenging students’ misconceptions and stereotypes about older adults. Students will develop beliefs and perspectives about the valuable assets and talents that older adults contribute to society.

“The collision of an inadequate workforce and a rapidly expanding older adult population demand that our TCU graduates be better equipped to work with and for older adults and their families, their communities and their workplaces,” said Dr. Linda Curry, director of TCU’s Center for Healthy Aging.

There is limited access to coursework in the DFW area to prepare college students to work with, or for, the older adult population. Texas and the nation are faced with overlapping realities of a rapidly aging workforce and of an increasingly diverse older adult population. These individuals have multiple and interlocking strengths, resources, needs and wants, which is beyond the knowledge and skills of one particular discipline.

Texas has the fourth largest older adult population in the United States and over 2.5 million Texans are age 60 or older. An estimated 66 percent are younger than 75 and approximately 50 percent of older Texans reside in three major areas of the state. San Antonio area, Houston-Galveston region and the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. By the year 2040, projections indicate that with the continued growth of the minority populations, approximately 31 percent of older Texans will be Hispanic, 19 percent will be African-American and 50 percent Anglo. In addition, the 60-plus population is projected to increase by 193 percent from 2000 to 2040, and of that, the 85+ population is expected to increase by 249.4 percent, which will make the aging population 23 percent of the total Texas population,

The Interdisciplinary Healthy Aging Minor will prepare TCU students to work with, or for, the growing aging population. Through the Healthy Aging Minor, students will: enhance their knowledge of healthy aging and the continuing contribution of adults in our society as they age; understand the diversity and complexity of the older adult population; create and provide products, services, and programs responsive to the wants and needs of the growing population of older adults; help organizations to recognize and value older adults as resources as well as clients; and examine the difficult decisions that they may face when older family members become vulnerable.

In order to earn the healthy aging minor, students are required to take 18 hours of coursework. Courses must be selected from at least three different departments, which may include the department of their major. Three courses totaling nine hours are required. They include SOCI 30643 Sociology of Aging, SOWO 40513 Interdisciplinary Approaches to Healthy Aging, and the Directed Studies course , providing students an opportunity to develop community based research projects..

In addition to these courses, students may select nine additional hours of coursework from: KINE 40780 Physical Activity and Aging, NURS 10303 Human Development, NURS 30503 Issues in Women’s Health, NURS/SOWO 30543 Family Health Nursing, NURS 30632 Concepts of Gerontological Nursing, POSC 30103/SOCI 30223 Aging Nation: Social and Public Policy Issues, PSYC 40950-060 Contemporary Topics in Psychology: Models of Stress and Health, SOCI 30483 Death and Dying: Sociological Viewpoints, SOWO 30853 Human Behavior and the Social Environment II, SOWO 40543 Social Work with Older Adults and SOWO 40563 Death and Dying.

For more information on TCU’s Center for Healthy Aging or the interdisciplinary healthy aging minor, visit www.healthyaging.tcu.edu or call Linda Curry at 817-257-7496.