IOA Staff
Mary Altpeter, Ph.D.
Interim Co-Director
Director, Healthy Aging Initiatives
Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Altpeter is Interim Co-Director of the Institute, Director of the IOA’s Healthy Aging Initiatives, and also Adjunct Lecturer in Public Health. She is trained in social work, gerontology and public administration, with a focus on community-level interventions and public policies that promote equitable and accessible health promotion programs for older adults. She joined the Institute on Aging in 1998, after serving for five years at the UNC-CH Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center as the Program Manager of the NCI-funded North Carolina Breast Cancer Screening Program, an eight-year multidisciplinary community intervention trial targeted at older African American women based. Dr. Altpeter has participated in other multi-disciplinary health promotion research and education projects and has published in the areas of evidence-based health promotion for older adults, participatory action research and building community partnerships to address preventive health care for marginalized older adults. Currently, she is the PI of the CDC-funded eight-year Prevention Research Center NC Healthy Aging Research Network that is part of a nine-campus national Healthy Aging Research Network (HAN). The mission of the HAN is to better understand the determinants of healthy aging in older adult populations; to identify interventions that promote healthy aging; and to assist in the translation of such research into sustainable community-based programs throughout the nation. Dr. Altpeter is also Co-investigator of the CDC-funded three-year project designed to determine whether the Walk with Ease (WWE) program (in group-assisted and self-directed versions) can increase physical activity and fitness levels among adults with arthritis over the long-term (Dr. Leigh Callahan, PI).
In addition, Dr. Altpeter is the project evaluator for the CDD/CDC-funded Senior Opportunity Grant to create the NC Healthy Aging Roadmap, an evaluation advisor for North Carolina’s AoA-funded Chronic Disease Self-Management program and the REACH II Caregiving for People With Alzheimer’s Disease Translation Project, and as the evaluator for the AoA-funded Innovation Grant to Better Serve People with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders. She is also serving as a consultant to Texas A&M University for an AoA-funded three-year grant to develop a nationwide plan for evaluation of evidence-based health promotion programs.
Dr. Altpeter also has extensive experience in community and provider education, working with national, state and county service systems. She serves as a consultant to the National Council on Aging’s Resource Center for Healthy Aging, the Carolina Geriatric Education Center and the California Geriatric Education Center. Dr. Altpeter has also served on the National Advisory Panel of the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and as a faculty mentor to the John A. Hartford Foundation Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Program. She also has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant to serve as an international consultant.
Prior to coming to UNC, Dr. Altpeter was Associate Director of the Geriatric Education Center at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and co-PI for an Administration on Aging grant that brought together the aging and alcoholism services systems to plan and implement a comprehensive training curriculum on older adults and alcoholism. She was also the administrative coordinator of a large geriatric medicine and dentistry fellowship program, coordinated numerous training seminars and public workshops on aging, and conducted program evaluation on numerous departmental training programs. Dr. Altpeter is also the former Director of Training for the New York State Division of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse and the former Co-director of the Title XX-funded Child and Family Services Unit of the Continuing Education Program of the University of New York at Albany School of Social Welfare, a statewide venture serving social service departments in 59 counties in that state.
Email: mary_altpeter@unc.edu
