IOA Staff
Mary Altpeter, Ph.D.
Senior research Scientist
Dr. Altpeter is also a Research Associate Professor in Social Work and 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 and human services. She joined the Institute on Aging in 1998, after serving for five years as the Program Manager of the North Carolina Breast Cancer Screening Program, an eight-year multidisciplinary community intervention trial targeted at older African American women, that was funded by the National Cancer Institute and several other private foundations, and based at the UNC-CH Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. 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. She also has extensive experience in community and provider education and working with county service systems. 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. She is also co-investigator of a CDC-funded three-year project designed to determine whether the Walk with Ease (WWE) program in its two versions (group-assisted and self-directed) can increase physical activity and fitness levels among individuals (age 18 and older) with arthritis over the long-term (Dr. Leigh Callahan, PI). In addition, she is the project evaluator for the CDD/CDC-funded Senior Opportunity Grant to create the NC Healthy Aging Roadmap. She also has extensive experience in community and provider education and working with county service systems, and serves as a consultant to the National Council on Aging’s Resource Center for Healthy Aging. While Associate Director of the Geriatric Education Center at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, Dr. Altpeter was 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
