University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Program on Aging.

The Program on Aging, established in 1982, was part of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It grew directly out of the School's 1979 federally funded Geriatric Curriculum Development Project. When the Project ended, the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated funds for an ongoing Program on Aging. During its brief history, the Program obtained a number of training and research grants and provided consultation to public and private agencies. It also developed the Geriatric Education Center in conjunction with the University's Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Social Work and the North Carolina Area Health Education Centers. In 1989, the Program's educational and research activities were absorbed by various departments of the School of Public Health, and the Program ceased to function as a separated entity.

Initiatives in the study of aging at the School of Public Health began in March 1978, when an interdepartmental Gerontology Committee was established with Dr. Dorothy Talbot as chair. This committee provided a mechanism for the exchange of ideas and mutual support until it was replaced by the new Advisory Committee of the Program on Aging in September 1981.

Meanwhile, in 1979, the federal government awarded the School of Public Health a two-year grant for geriatric curriculum development with Harry Phillips as project director and Leonard Rosenfeld as associate director. With the assistance of this grant, Drs. Phillips and Rosenfeld and the newly formed Geriatric Curriculum Development Advisory Committee furthered the teaching of geriatrics in the various departments of the school by designing instructional materials and instituting new courses on aging.

When federal funding for the Curriculum Development Project ended in early 1982, the North Carolina General Assembly responded favorably to a request for continuing support, and an ongoing Program on Aging was established. In 1983, the School of Public Health hired William Weissert, former senior research associate at the United States National Center for Health Service Research, as Director of the Program on Aging and Professor of Health Policy and Administration. Dr. Weissert served as director of the program until 1989.

During Weissert's tenure, the Program on Aging won multiple training and research grants and, consistent with its mission of improving the health and well-being of the aged, provided consultation to private and governmental agencies in the United States and Canada. In 1985, it secured funding to develop a Geriatric Education Center in collaboration with the Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Social Work and the North Carolina Area Health Education Centers Program. Between 1985 and 1988, the Geriatric Education Center provided, among other things, a core course in geriatric health care, three-week summer institutes for practicing health-care professionals and teaching faculty, training for nursing home administrators-in-training, and part-time geriatric fellowships in the School of Medicine. In 1989 the promotion of geriatric education and research was turned over to the various departments of the School of Public Health, and the Program on Aging ceased to function as a centralized agency.