UC Renews Affiliation With Maple Knoll Village

The University of Cincinnati (UC) and Maple Knoll Village have a 30-year history of working together in nursing, medicine, pharmacy, education and practice. On Thursday, May 10, 2018, at the continuing care retirement community in Springdale, they formally renewed their partnership, signing a new five-year affiliation agreement. 

In 2012, UC worked with Maple Knoll to transform a villa into a learning and testing environment for the development of technologies aimed at keeping seniors in their own homes or communities longer. Known as the Innovation Collaboratory House, the villa is a partnership between several UC Colleges and Maple Knoll Village. It is home to telehealth robots and patient simulators, and is the testing ground for innovative student projects aimed at detecting falls, preventing medication errors and making life easier for an aging population.

"This really is our dream at the College of Nursing,” said Greer Glazer, PhD, dean of the College of Nursing. "We’re about teaching, we’re about doing research on the things that we’re teaching and we’re about providing service to people in the community.” 

The redeveloped affiliation between UC and Maple Knoll Village, which states, "We will shape the future of health care and promote the best lifestyle possible for older adults,” was signed by Glazer and Jim Formal, the president and CEO of Maple Knoll Communities.

"Waves and waves of people are aging into that 65 and older population, and the 85 and older population is expected to triple in the next three years,” said Formal. "This affiliation has led to a number of activities including research projects, development of technology with the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences in conjunction with the College of Nursing, then testing that technology and creating learning experiences for students all designed to deal with this silver tsunami. By renewing this affiliation, it’s going to allow us to continue those efforts.” 

Glazer said the ‘silver tsunami’ not only impacts the general population, but also the workforce.

"Part of the beauty of this is exposing our students to this environment, one that is a very important area to be able to deliver care in,” said Glazer. "These students will take the place of all of us who are a little older. We’re going to age out of the workplace, so we’re creating this workplace of the future in addition to the teaching, the research and the service to the community.”