The University of Ottawa Healthy Aging
Research Program | HARP Lab
The Healthy Aging Research Program (HARP) Lab is based in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. Our work sits at the intersection of health, equity, community, and aging. At the HARP Lab, aging well isn't about staying perfectly healthy. Aging is part of living! And aging well means living meaningfully and staying connected to our communities, with the support to do so.
We study what contributes to aging well and how to address health inequities to support a diverse aging population. We're interested in how structural, built, and social environments shape health-related outcomes in older adulthood, with an emphasis on mental health and cognition. We explore how older people stay mobile in their communities, and how maintained mobility contributes to healthy aging.
Across everything we do, we centre the lived and living experience of older adults and work in close partnership with community organizations and lived-experience advisory groups.
HARP is also a training environment. We support graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduate researchers, and mentorship is woven through all of our research.