Happy 50th birthday to the National Institute on Aging: Where would geriatric medicine and care of older adults be without you?

The authors talk about the 50th anniversary of the passage in the U.S. Congress of Public Law 93-296 authorizing the establishment of a National Institute on Aging (NIA), mandating NIA to develop a plan to coordinate the involvement of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in aging research. They discuss how NIA's impact is evaluated, the leadership role played by NIA in training the next generation of leaders, and the challenges confronting academic medicine and geriatrics.