Verena Menec is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine. She received her doctorate in social psychology from the University of Manitoba. She currently holds a Canada Research Chair in Healthy Aging. She served as the Director of the Centre on Aging at the University of Manitoba for nine years (2004-2014) and has also served on numerous advisory committees, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Aging’s Advisory Board from 2005 to 2011. Her main research interests lie in the areas of healthy aging, determinants of healthy aging, age-friendly communities, and health care utilization among older adults, particularly at the end of life. She is the Manitoba lead of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), a large, national, long-term study that will follow approximately 50,000 men and women between the ages of 45 and 85 for at least 20 years. The study is funded by CIHR and collects information on the changing biological, medical, psychological, social, lifestyle and economic aspects of people’s lives. CLSA is one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind undertaken to date, not only in Canada but around the world.