Research-Practice Gap: Impact on Campaigns and Mitigation Strategies

As climate change continues to pose disproportionate public health challenges to the notion of aging in place, it is imperative that evidence is translated to practice. The sustainability of healthy aging research and its funding in contexts addressing crises depend on bridging the gap between research and practice. The Cornell Research-to-Practice (RTP) Consensus Workshop Model is a proposed strategy to bridge the gap between aging research and practice by promoting a workshop environment to catalyze discussions among researchers in the field of aging. To date, the model has been applied to a wide range of aging topics of interest including older adult mistreatment and palliative care. The RTP model presents the ability to be enhanced and to be adapted to other areas of research that also impact aging in place during times of crises, such as climate change. This chapter aims to apply the Cornell RTP framework for addressing the research-practice gap using the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH) Cooling Centers campaign and proposes an adapted and enhanced model for bridging this gap to promote aging in place.