Family Vitality and Variation in Aging
Guest Speaker
Melissa deCardi Hladek is a researcher-clinician with work focusing on how stress, self-efficacy, resilience, and sociocultural factors influence the biology of aging, chronic disease, frailty progression and resilience trajectories. Her research spans from nationally representative large cohort datasets to community participatory qualitative and mixed methods for interventional design and implementation. Her research goals are to further understand the role of stress and coping in aging and develop novel strategies and policies to mitigate these effects. Dr. Hladek attended Johns Hopkins University for her PhD and postdoctoral training, Columbia University for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing, and Scripps College for her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience. She is a special volunteer at the NIH working on novel methods of collecting biological data. A family nurse practitioner since 2004, Dr. Hladek has worked with vulnerable populations experiencing homelessness and incarceration and in both rural and urban settings with primarily Spanish-speaking immigrant communities. She is currently the president-elect for the National Association of Hispanic Nurses-DC Chapter and advisor for the Latinx Health Advisory Group at Hopkins School of Nursing.
Dr. Hladek will be speaking on the following topics at the Spring Conference:
Living our Best Lives and Aging Successfully in the midst of a Global Pandemic
Resilience and Resilience Trajectories in Healthy Aging
The conference day provides a maximum of 10 hours of Category I continuing education credit for social workers and for counselors.