School Notes: School of Public Health
May/June 2026

Innovation Hub explores solutions for healthier societies

A new Future of Health Innovation Hub at the Yale School of Public Health is translating science into scalable solutions for healthier societies. Launched in February, the hub aims to do four things: redefine population-level health entrepreneurship and innovation; equip students and faculty members with critical innovation skills; build sustainable partnerships across academia, industry, government, and philanthropy; and advance interdisciplinary collaboration. “At the Yale School of Public Health, we believe that identifying and solving health problems requires an all-of-society approach,” Dean Megan Ranney said. “So, guided by our new strategic plan, we are creating rooms where lots of different people from lots of different perspectives are together. That creates this mishmash of ideas, approaches, and perspectives that allows us to truly innovate, to come up with out-of-the-box solutions or new ways of implementing what we know works.”

Study challenges perception of aging decline

A YSPH study is challenging the common notion that our cognitive and physical abilities tend to decline as we age. In new research published in the journal Geriatrics, Professor Becca R. Levy finds that older individuals can and do improve over time, and their mindset toward aging plays a major part in their success.

Analyzing more than a decade of data from a large, nationally representative study of older Americans, Levy found that nearly half of adults aged 65 and older showed measurable improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both, over time. “Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities,” Levy said. “What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare; it’s common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process.”