ABOUT ISAR
Bridging Two Fields
ISAR was founded in 2019 after four alums of the Health and Aging Policy Fellows Program chatted over dinner about the lack of people interested in implementation science and aging research. They discussed the need for more people to become interested in the intersection of implementation science and aging research and that there needed to be a way for everyone to learn about each other and collaborate.
Thus, the Implementation Science and Aging Research Special Interest Group - known as ISAR, for short - was born.
Soon after, ISAR held its first activity at the 2019 NIH/AcademyHealth Annual D&I Meeting. Through word-of-mouth, the founders were able to convince 22 people to attend a 7:30am meeting based solely on the promise they would meet others interested in implementation science and aging research. At that meeting, it was decided that to help build this network, ISAR would create a website, Twitter account, and send out a quarterly newsletter about implementation science and aging research.
During the first year, ISAR went from 22 members to over 100, and in December 2020, ISAR held its second annual meeting during the D&I Conference - virtually this time, due to the pandemic.
At the 2020 meeting, reflecting on its first year of existence, ISAR members expressed enthusiasm for the rapidly growing network and brainstormed ways to improve ISAR's reach and effectiveness. Improvements to come out of that meeting included:
Establishing a leadership structure consisting of three co-conveners (see the Leadership page)
Creating a new website (hi!) where members could interact with one another (see Members Portal)
Creating a quarterly seminar series so members could learn about each others' work, get feedback on their work, and learn about opportunities in the field (see the Seminar Series page)
Focusing on engaging other organizations, such as the Gerontological Society of America, both to encourage folks to join ISAR and to introduce implementation science to the aging field.
As we work on these improvements, we continue to produce a quarterly newsletter and have our annual meeting, coinciding with the annual D&I meeting in December.
We are excited about the future of ISAR and of the growth at the intersection of implementation science and aging research! Please take a look around the site, sign up (for free!) as a member, and get in touch with us!