As you may know, Ensuring Lifespan Health is one of USC’s strategic priorities. Life expectancies are generally increasing worldwide, contributing to a demographic shift in which older people will soon outnumber young children. This change presents health care challenges on a global scale and refigures certain elements of our social fabric. At USC, and with our partners across the country and world, we are working to meet these challenges head on – we don’t just want to extend life, we want to extend life well.
As a scientist myself, I was pleased to stand alongside Dean Pinchas Cohen to welcome physicians, RNs, allied health professionals, and dietitians from across the world to the 1st International Conference on Fasting, Dietary Restriction, Longevity and Disease, a first-of-its-kind event presented by the USC Longevity Institute and the USC Office of Continuing Medical Education and hosted at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. The two-day training course helped medical professionals improve how they integrate dietary interventions in their practice and improve how they discuss these interventions with their patients.
USC has been a pioneer in advancing health and dignity for the aging from the very beginning. We were the first university in the country to launch a school of gerontology. Such greats as Edward Schneider, Caleb “Tuck” Finch, and Eileen Crimmins have been with us since the 1980s working on these issues, and Valter Longo, who currently directs the Longevity Institute, is continuing to advance this humanistic science. Longo’s work, including in fasting-mimicking diets, aims to help us maintain our health as we age, and he also works to prevent and treat age-related conditions.
USC is well-positioned to contribute even more to this field through the deepening convergent work between the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, the USC Davis School of Gerontology, and multiple departments in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
I congratulate Dean Cohen and Valter Longo for organizing such an innovative and ambitious event and I look forward to hearing about the results of the sessions.
— Michael W. Quick, November 13, 2018