Silver Scholar Award
The MetLife Foundation Silver Scholar Award honors the important work of economists, demographers, and related researchers whose scholarship increases our understanding of the value of healthy life after 65 and continued medical innovations that help people live longer in good health. Learn more about the ideas behind the award.
Silver Scholars receive a cash prize in recognition of their valuable research and to support the writing of a review or analysis of their work—to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. The Alliance for Aging Research, in partnership with the MetLife Foundation, hosts a public event to announce the publication of this paper. If you would like to receive event details once available, please e-mail Lindsay Clarke at the Alliance.
This is the second year for The MetLife Foundation Silver Scholar Award and the Alliance hopes to continue the program to increase and nurture scholarly pursuit of insights at this important juncture of aging, health care, and economics.
Dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, was selected in honor of her innovative work contributing pragmatic solutions to address the rising cost of health care associated with the aging of our nation, preventive strategies aimed at keeping aging populations healthier longer, and thought leadership on the positive contributions that greater longevity brings to society. Read the announcement here.
Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH
Dean and DeLamar Professor of Public Health
Senior Vice President, Columbia University Medical Center
Professor of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health
Professor of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University
Dr. Linda P. Fried is a leader in the fields of epidemiology and geriatrics who has dedicated her career to the science of healthy aging and creating the basis for a transition to a world where greater longevity benefits people of all ages. An internationally renowned scientist, she has done seminal work in defining frailty as a medical condition, illuminating its causes and the potential for prevention as keys to optimizing health for older adults.
Dr. Fried is also the designer and co-founder of Experience Corps, a community-based program in 22 cities that puts senior volunteers to work in public schools with the dual goal of lifting the educational success of school children and improving the health of the older volunteers. She has led a randomized, controlled trial of this innovative intervention to determine its efficacy in preventing physical disability and cognitive decline among older adults, while raising child literacy. This was done in collaboration with Baltimore City, its commission on aging, the school system, and a major community organization. Her role in designing and evaluating Experience Corps was recognized with the American Public Health Association Archstone Award in 2000, the Maxwell Pollack Award of the Gerontological Society of America in 2001, and the National Bridge Builders Award in 2008.
Before coming to Columbia in 2008 as Dean of the Mailman School, Dr. Fried was the Mason F. Lord Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the John Hopkins Medical Institutions. She directed the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health, the Program in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics of Aging, and the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at Johns Hopkins, where she held joint appointments in the schools of medicine, nursing and public health.
As Dean of the Mailman School, Dr. Fried has led the introduction of an innovative Master of Public Health curriculum that puts a life-course approach to prevention front and center. Among her many achievements as dean is bringing to Columbia University the International Longevity Center, a research and advocacy center on aging that was founded by the late Dr. Robert Butler.
Dr. Fried is a member of the MacArthur Network on an Aging Society and the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Challenges of an Aging World. She serves on the editorial boards of multiple professional journals, including the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, and Aging. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine.
Among Dr. Fried’s many awards are a Merit Award from the National Institute on Aging, a 2011 Silver Innovator’s Award from the Alliance for Aging Research, and the Enrico Greppi Prize from the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics. Both the American Federation for Aging Research and the American Geriatrics Society have recognized her for career contributions to research on aging. In 2004, she was named a “Living Legend in Medicine” by the U.S. Congress.
Learn about our 2011 recipients Drs Dana Goldman and David Cutler.
The Metlife Foundation Silver Scholar Award grows out of the Alliance’s Silver Book: Chronic Disease and Medical Innovation in an Aging Nation—a resource that highlights the burden of disease and the value of innovation in mitigating that burden. The Silver Book brings together the 1,000s of statistics and data from 100s of reputable reports and studies, all into one easy-to-use resource. Past volumes from The Silver Book series and their data are available on-line at www.silverbook.org.
This award is supported by a grant from
