Constance M. Bayles, Ph.D., is the program director for the Center for Healthy Aging (CHA), University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), and a faculty member in the department of epidemiology at the GSPH.
The CHA is a Prevention Research Center, one of 33 such centers across the United States funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CHA specializes in research, education and community outreach activities and partners with many local, state and national organizations. Dr. Bayles, the CHA team and their partners promote the concept of healthy aging by educating the community about the Center’s “10 Keys to Healthy Aging.” These keys aim to reduce preventable risk factors in the aging population and improve quality life expectancy with a focus on preventable diseases and disability. Based on research findings, the 10 keys are: maintaining social contacts; combating depression; increasing physical activity; stopping smoking; preventing bone loss; participating in cancer screenings; getting regular immunizations; lowering LDL cholesterol; controlling systolic blood pressure and regulating blood glucose.
Dr. Bayles has worked in numerous capacities as an exercise gerontologist in the Pittsburgh area for the past 20 years and is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. Other past experiences include: program and department directing; teaching; counseling students; developing new programs in gerontology; community service; professional, community and media presentations and research.
She has authored many publications in the aging, exercise and rehabilitation field and has presented papers nationally and internationally. The most unique and memorable presentation was at the Institute of Gerontology in Kiev, Ukraine in 1992, when aging specialists from across the United States traveled to Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia and Germany to meet with medical professionals and to study geriatric medicine in their countries. Dr. Bayles’ presentation to them was titled, “Exercise and Aging.”
Dr. Bayles also has had several guest appearances on radio and television along with numerous articles in local and national newspapers and professional journals. She was given the Bob Burdick Commitment to Caring Award at Slippery Rock University in April 1999, where she had been coordinator of the gerontology program; was one of 13 finalists across the country for the American Hospital Association NOVA Award in 1996 and received the Catherine McAuley Award, Certificate of Achievement from Eastern Mercy Health System, for the ElderFIT Exercise Program in 1995. She also has served on numerous committees and participated in many special projects. These include serving as group assistant leader for the International Elderhostel to Poland in 1998, where she supervised 32 older adults on a trip to Warszawa and Krakow, Poland; and serving as consultant for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in a state-wide initiative to decrease fall risk in community elderly, from 1996 to 1998. Along with colleagues across the state, Dr. Bayles developed a fall risk assessment piloted in February 1998.
Dr. Bayles received her bachelor’s degree in education at the California University of Pennsylvania in 1973, and her master’s degree in education from the University of Pittsburgh in 1977. She then earned her doctorate in exercise physiology, health education and cardiac rehabilitation with a specialty in exercise gerontology in 1986 from the University of Pittsburgh.
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