Narrator: This is Science Today. It's estimated that every year about a million elderly people in the United States are abused. Dr. Laura Mosqueda, director of the University of California, Irvine Medical Center's Geriatrics Program is a well-known expert on elder abuse treatment.

Mosqueda: We decided here at UCI to take a closer look at this issue and see how we could add a medical component into the social and criminal justice system. We found the most efficient and best way to bring all these different aspects together – social services, criminal justice and medical – was to form the first ever elder abuse forensic center and what we do is look at particularly complicated abuse cases that require a team approach. We find that we're able to solve problems more quickly and we think in a better way for both the victim and the perpetrator.

Narrator: The Elder Abuse Forensic Center was established in 2003 and is located in Santa Ana, California . For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.