By 2030, one in five Americans will be over the age of 65 — a demographic shift that presents growing challenges around independence, mobility and access to care. 

The aging population in the U.S. has grown almost five times faster than the total population over the past century — in 1920, fewer than one in 20 Americans were over 65. In response, USC gerontologists are working with a new federally funded center based in Los Angeles to ensure that longer lives are also healthier, more independent ones. 

A five-year, $6.5 million federal grant from the National Institute on Aging is funding the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center — a partnership among non-profit academic hospital Cedars‑Sinai, UCLA and USC. The center aims to help people live not just longer but healthier, connecting scientists and physicians focused on aging.

Dr. Sara Espinoza, professor of medicine at Cedars‑Sinai and a leader of the new center, said the project builds on a shared vision and goal of increasing longevity among the aging population.

“People are living longer, but as people live longer, they may tend to gain multiple chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer [and] dementia,” Espinoza said. “Our goal [in] this research is to identify ways that we can help people live healthier [and] longer and minimize the impact of multiple chronic diseases.”

The LA OAIC was officially established on Sept. 1 with more than 100 researchers across the three institutions working together. Espinoza described it as “translational research,” where discoveries made in laboratories — such as new drugs, therapies or methodologies — are moved into real‑world clinical interventions.

Dr. Pinchas Cohen, dean of the Davis School of Gerontology and co-director of the new center, said the effort reflects decades of work to make L.A. a hub for healthy‑aging science.

“Aging research is a unique highlight of USC, and USC has the only school of gerontology in the country,” Cohen said. “There’s been a focus on healthy aging [and] prevention of aging‑related diseases at USC for 50 years.”

Cohen said the center is a result of the much-needed collaboration across the three institutions and that he believes neighboring universities can achieve more if they work in unison. They have not historically collaborated on aging research.

“Rather than competing with sister institutions like UCLA and Cedars‑Sinai, we should work together and collaborate. We can be bigger than the sum of the parts if we work together,” Cohen said.

Dr. Jonathan Wanagat, a clinical professor of medicine at UCLA and the co-director of the new center, said each institution brought different expertise to the table: For instance, he said UCLA has one of the country’s largest geriatric fellowship programs and Cedars-Sinai can offer diverse patient populations.

“Each of these institutions brings unique strengths, and together, all three of us can build something that a single institution maybe couldn’t accomplish on its own,” Wanagat said. 

Each institution has around 30 to 40 faculty members participating in the research work for the LA OAIC. Wanagat said the academic opportunities will extend to scholars in their career paths, including undergraduate and even high school students. 

“It’s really the trainees, the students at each of these three institutions, that are at the heart of this entire effort,” Wanagat said. “We’ve learned that the earlier you can engage and support people who have an interest in your area, the more likely it is that they’ll be able to follow that passion.”

With its interdisciplinary reach and city‑wide scope, Cohen said he hopes the LA OAIC will make the city a national model for collaborative research on aging.

“[LA OAIC] just demonstrated how we now have a community of researchers across town with so much enthusiasm and energy,” Cohen said.