Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

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Experiencing Aging in Your Mid-Twenties

July 24, 2018 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

An ophthalmologist, my husband Jack underwent years of medical training. When he reflects on this time – particularly the earliest parts of it—he, like many of his ilk, admits to at least a fleeting period of preoccupation with getting or having the symptoms of the diseases he studied. I’ve always wondered, when regaled with his harrowing clinical tales, if such an analog to medical-student syndrome exists and what it might look like for my colleagues and I who study gerontology.

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Let’s talk about sex—after 60

March 21, 2018 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

Older adults account for an increasing proportion of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, in the United States. Notwithstanding, sex after sixty continues to remain shrouded in silence. In this post, doctoral student Christina Pierpaoli Parker discusses the reasons for and consequences of the scantiness of late life sexual health conversations, concluding with recommendations for increasing their visibility.

Weight man-age-ment

January 19, 2018 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

In my current capacity as a behaviorist at a weight loss medicine clinic, I work alongside patients to identify their weight loss goals and modify the behaviors sabotaging them. Far and away, these patients blame aging the most. Is this a convenient falsity, or inconvenient truth?

Helpful Hacks for Researching With Older Adults

April 1, 2017 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

Conducting clinical and other types of research with older adults is complex but rewarding if you take appropriate measures to reduce errors and bias.

Marri-AGE

December 28, 2016 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

At 25, I recognize and hope that I’ve probably still got a generous chunk of life left to live. I am by no means over the hill, day old bread, slipping into the grave—or whatever other toxic euphemism we’ve got stored up in our cultural arsenal. I am probably, given my vocation, more aware of my […]

Check Your Ageism, Science. It’s Unbecoming

November 2, 2016 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

Calls for a de-youthanized science are not lofty, liberal political appeals; they are attempts to actually purify gerontological science and practice. A de-youthanized science means a more valid, generalizable science—a science, for example, that adequately samples older adults in the service of providing sufficiently evidence-based recommendations for diagnosis and treatment

Sexy-agenarians

September 2, 2016 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

As a culture, we have adopted a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy about sexuality, which, of course, stifles dialogues about sexual health for almost everyone at any age. To complicate matters, we also place a high social premium on youthfulness. So naturally, conversations about sex and aging represent the paragon of taboo in this country.

Wise Up: Study Aging

July 18, 2016 | Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

I am certainly not blind to how fortuitously my interest in aging aligns with the needs of an aging world—and I certainly don’t need additional convincing that my decision to forgo law school was in equal measure, wise and slightly prescient. But maybe you do.

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Christina Pierpaoli, ChangingAging Contributor

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