Teresa Orosa Fraíz, Professor of the Faculty of Psychology at the Universidad de la Habana (Cuba), has worked to promote education as an essential factor in achieving healthy ageing through transformation of mentalities about old age, ageing and older people. For more than 20 years she has been promoting the pillars of a new gerontological culture within the spheres of her influences. Teresa Orosa Fraíz has been the founder and leader of the University of the Third Age programme in Cuba under the name of Cátedras del Adulto Mayor, which has benefited thousands of older people. Two decades ago, she also succeeded in training young people to include the subject in the undergraduate psychology course in the country's curriculum.
Teresa Orosa Fraíz has also trained professionals of different profiles such as pedagogues, jurists, demographers, economists, doctors, architects, geographers, sociologists, among others, recognising that an interdisciplinary view of the subject is required to change dominant cultural narratives on age and ageing. But by far the most innovative work in healthy ageing Teresa Orosa Fraíz has been responsible for is the founding and development of the education programme for older people in Cuba: the University Chairs for the Older Adult, a programme based on the self-sustainable participation of older adult volunteers as an intrinsic part of university faculties, with classrooms in various urban and rural localities, and with actions that contribute to local development. This programme has been running for 22 years and Theresa Orosa Fraíz has accompanied its scaling up at national level, with Chairs now attached to all Cuban universities.
As an academic, Teresa Orosa Fraíz has coordinated integrated actions across the different gerontological research groups at the Universidad de la Habana. She has been invited to expert groups dedicated to the design of measures at governmental level to promote healthy ageing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she also participated in the elaboration and dissemination of a Psychogerontological Observatory study on mental health care for the older adult population, urgently raising awareness of ageist attitudes and defending the rights of the older people. Teresa Orosa Fraíz is now 68 years old, and she continues to be an active university teacher, full of innovative projects and ideas.