For immediate release: August 22, 2008
Contact: Anne McMillin, APR
Office 775-682-9254
Mobile 702-292-4247
amcmillin@medicine.nevada.edu

School of Medicine invites the public to free lecture
on arts, healthcare and aging

Collaboration brings New York's Museum of Modern Art lecturer to Reno

RENO, Nev.— The University of Nevada School of Medicine’s Office of Medical Humanities and Ethics invites the public to attend a free lecture entitled “The Arts, Healthcare, and Aging” on Wednesday, Sept. 3 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Joe Crowley Student Union theater (3rd floor) at the University of Nevada, Reno.

           The lecture will be presented by Amir Parsa, the education director at the Museum of Modern Art in New York who manages programs, curricula, events and models of educational interaction for diverse audiences. He will address the relationship between the arts and aging, and the arts and healthcare in general, to offer some successful strategies for educational and professional collaborations between academia, clinics, and museums.

           Statistics indicate that by the year 2030, 28 percent of the population in the U.S. will be over 60, and the number of those over 85 will triple. The arts can help us understand and define aging, offer the opportunity for self-expression amidst loss, and provide ample opportunities for lifelong learning and service to others. Arts organizations can expect to have older adults participate in arts programming as this demographic shifts.

           This lecture is brought to Reno through a collaboration of the School of Medicine’s Office of Medical Humanities and Ethics, the UNR School of the Arts, Gerontology Academic Program, Nevada Caregivers Center at UNR’s Department of Psychology and the Sanford Center on Aging, in conjunction with the Nevada Museum of Art, Renown Health Healing Arts, and Sierra Arts.

As the state’s only public medical school, the University of Nevada School of Medicine has been a leader in healthcare, medical education and research in Nevada since 1969. The School of Medicine includes 16 clinical departments including family medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, surgery, and psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and five nationally recognized departments in basic science including microbiology and biomedical engineering. The more than 185 doctors of University Health System, the school’s clinical practice, offer care in more than 40 medical specialties and subspecialties with eight physician offices in the Reno/Sparks area and seven in Las Vegas. The school is committed to a best practices approach to medicine and is dedicated to exceptional healthcare for Nevada now and in the future. For more information visit www.medicine.nevada.edu.