Academic Leadership Roles and the Promotion of Research, Education, and Practices That Reframe Aging

Healthy aging represents an aspect of nursing science where there is accelerating academic interest in a topic that is of great public interest. Thus, an opportunity presents to consider how best to leverage academic leadership roles to assure a forward-looking curriculum, foster relevant research, and communicate results to the public. There are many roles that academic nursing leaders can play in advancing transformational ideas such as healthy aging, including acting as incubator and resource, hub and bridge, educational futurist, and public advocate. Nursing brings to this transformational task knowledge of the need for evidence-based research to guide policy and decision making as it relates to aging, clinical experience, and an ability to convey to a non-professional audience the clinical experience and research results. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 45(12), 28-32.].