What We Do

The Center on Aging and Community conducts applied research, provides education and technical assistance, and engages in activities designed to improve the quality of life for individuals, the excellence of organizations, and the livability of neighborhoods and communities.

Our core values help determine what we do and how we do it.

• We see persons with disabilities and elders as contributing, sensible, and valued citizens whose voices count.

• We see disability itself not as a personal quality but as a relationship between an individual and his/her environment. This leads us to focus not on disabled persons, but on disabling environments.

• We value participatory models of research that foreground the perspectives, opinions, and capabilities of so-called research "subjects."

• We value the arts and humanities as vehicles for better understanding of the human experience and as tools for developing bridges across difference.

The pages in this area are examples of specific, current projects of the Center on Aging and Community.

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Footnote: For clinical and quantitative research in aging and developmental disabilities, we recommend the following sites.

• The University of Illinois at Chicago: Rehabilitation Research & Training Center on Aging with Developmental Disabilities
• The United States Department of Health and Human Services: Office of Disability, Aging, and Long-Term Care Policy