Sit back in the comfort of your office and enjoy ICAA educational programs delivered to you via webinar. These broadcasts are specifically created for active-aging professionals – business owners, managers, suppliers, wellness and activities personnel. Through interviews or individual-speaker sessions, you will be exposed to the opinions of top experts from a variety of subject areas designed to help you and your staff stay on top of trends, meet new challenges and serve your customers better.

• Healthy aging beyond the gym: How nutrition can support muscle health

 

Healthy aging beyond the gym: How nutrition can support muscle health

Presenter: Carley Rusch, PhD, RDN, LDN and William J. Evans, PhD.

Moderator: Colin Milner

Date: April 21, 2026

Time: EST, 11:00 AM CST, 9:00 AM PST

Length: 60 minutes

To register, click here

This webinar highlights the essential role of nutrition in supporting muscle health as adults age. Participants will explore how muscle mass and nutrient intake influence strength, function, and overall quality of life. The session will review current methods for assessing muscle mass and muscle quality, along with their limitations. It will also examine evidence based nutrition interventions—especially protein and HMB—to help support muscle function and promote healthy aging.

Learning objectives:

• Discuss the relationship between muscle mass and nutrition on overall health outcomes and quality of life.
• Examine the current strategies and limitations to measuring muscle mass and quality.
• Evaluate the effects of nutrition supplementation with protein and beta-hydroxy-beta-methlbutyrate (HMB) to support muscle quality and function in older adults.

Presenters' biographies

William J. Evans, PhD.
Dr. Evans is an Adjunct Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatrics at the Duke University Medical Center and Human Nutrition in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He previously was Vice President and head of the Muscle Metabolism Discovery Unit at GSK. He has served as laboratory director at the Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the Noll Physiological Research Center at Penn State and as the Chief of the Human Physiology Laboratory at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. With an H-index of 128 and more than 81,000 citations he is the author or co-author of more than 350 publications in scientific journals and was the first to describe sarcopenia. He is the co-inventor of the D3Creatine dilution method, a non-invasive and accurate measurement of muscle mass which is strongly related to health outcomes in older people. His work has been featured in the PBS series, NOVA, Good Morning America, 20/20, CBS evening news, CNN, and the New York Times. Dr. Evans has been invited to testify before the US Senate Select Committee on Aging on strategies to save Medicare. He is a founding member of the Society for Sarcopenia, Cachexia, and Wasting Disorders and recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Conference on Frailty and Sarcopenia Research.

Carley Rusch, PhD, RDN, LDN
Dr. Rusch serves as a Medical Science Liaison in Medical Affairs & Research at Abbott specializing in Adult Therapeutic Nutrition.

Prior to joining Abbott, Dr. Rusch completed her bachelor’s degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Florida (UF) specializing in Dietetics. She earned her master’s degree and completed her dietetic internship through the MS-DI program at UF. During her dietetic training, she also served as a research coordinator on a variety of study protocols, including topics on gastrointestinal dysfunction, inflammation, pre- and probiotics, and the gut microbiome. She then went on to work as an inpatient dietitian at AdventHealth Orlando and served as a preceptor for their dietetic internship program. Her clinical experience spans a variety of disease states such as cancer, gastrointestinal and neurological disorders, malnutrition and critical care.

Following her time working in clinical practice, Dr. Rusch completed her PhD in Nutritional Sciences at UF. Her doctoral research investigated the effect of the Mediterranean diet on improving constipation and intestinal inflammation in Parkinson’s disease. During her graduate programs, she has taught multiple undergraduate and graduate courses on nutrition, metabolism, and research methods. In 2020, she was awarded Recognized Young Dietitian of the Year by the Florida Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Dr. Rusch has several publications in peer-reviewed journals and been invited to present at national and international conferences.

How to join the webinar

To view how to join the webinar, please click here.

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