Claude D Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at Yale
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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Established in 1992, the Yale Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) seeks to continue providing intellectual leadership and innovation for aging research that aims to enhance independence. Our unifying theme remains the investigation of multifactorial geriatric health conditions, encompassing single conditions resulting from multiple contributing factors or affecting multiple outcome domains and multiple conditions occurring simultaneously. Our premise is that health conditions common in older adults are determined by the co-occurrence of multiple predisposing and precipitating factors. These conditions and factors, in turn, affect a range of health domains. The predisposing factors may be at genetic, physiologic (impairment), disease, or socio-demographic levels, while the precipitating factors may be behavioral, environmental, social, medical, or psychological. What distinguishes Yale OAIC research is that its purpose is to investigate the interactions among, or intervene on, multiple factors simultaneously and to measure the effect of conditions or interventions on a range of health domains. The Aims of the Yale OAIC are to: 1) develop the careers of future academic leaders in aging/geriatrics;2) train investigators and methodologists in the skills necessary to design, conduct, and analyze studies of multifactorial geriatric health conditions; 3) develop design and analytic techniques for conducting studies of multifactorial geriatric health conditions; 4) develop strategies for recruiting into, and retaining, a broad spectrum of older adults, including minorities, into OAIC studies; 5) investigate the causative mechanisms of, and identify effective treatments for, health conditions experienced by older adults from a multifactorial research perspective; 6) develop outcome measures for use in investigating multifactorial geriatric health conditions and for studying older adults with multiple coexisting conditions; and 7) facilitate basic, translational, and interdisciplinary research that connects to our focus on multifactorial geriatric health conditions. The Yale OAIC cores include: 1) Leadership / Administrative; 2) Research Career Development; 3) Pilot/Exploratory; 5) Biostatistics; 6) Data Management / Informatics; and 7) Field. For the first years of the next cycle, we propose to support 4 RCDC candidates; 4 pilot studies (including 2 by RCDC candidates); 1 computational biology development study; and 14 externally funded projects.
The overall goal of the Yale Research Career Development Core (RCDC) is to identify and train a cadre of junior investigators who will be future leaders in aging research, with the skills necessary to design/conduct biological, translational, and clinical studies of multifactorial geriatric health conditions. The specific aims are: (1) to promote the career development and acquisition of research skills of selected junior faculty through the provision of salary, infrastructure/technical, and other career development support; (2) to provide and facilitate priority access by junior faculty to the resource cores' expertise and services for the design, conduct, and analysis of studies addressing multifactorial geriatric health conditions; (3) to promote the development of skills for translational research (basic ¿¿clinical ¿¿basic; clinical ¿> practice) that addresses our focus on multifactorial geriatric health conditions; (4) to identify and foster opportunities for interdisciplinary research; (5) to sponsor a yearly junior faculty retreat that provides intensive training and support in research career development; (6) to provide and facilitate access to educational activities in aging research locally and nationally; and (7) to enhance access to other career development resources, such as protocol development, information on funding sources, grant resource library, suitable mentors and collaborators, appropriate study populations, and geriatric instrument catalog. As reflected in these aims, there will be a greater emphasis during the next funding cycle on translational and interdisciplinary research. Dr. Thomas Gill, an NIH-funded clinical investigator with international stature for his work on functional decline and disability and with proven leadership and mentorship abilities, will lead the RCDC. For the first year, 4 candidates of outstanding promise, representing different disciplines with diverse backgrounds and interests, have been selected: Sarwat Chaudhry, MD (General Medicine), Manisha Juthani-Mehta, MD (Infectious Disease), Arthur Simen, MD, PhD (Molecular Psychiatry and Human Genetics), and Ji Li, PhD (Cardiology). Successful renewal of the Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) will allow us to build on many of the successful procedures that we have established over the past 15 years and to continue to address the scarcity of clinical, translational and basic science investigators with optimal skills and training to rigorously study the etiology, prognosis and management of multifactorial geriatric health conditions.
The primary goal of the Pilot/Exploratory Studies Core (PESC) is to facilitate the development of innovative and methodologically rigorous research studies designed to enhance our understanding of the etiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of multifactorial geriatric health conditions (the stated focus of the Yale OAIC.1), leading ultimately to the development of efficacious and cost-effective interventions to increase or maintain independence for older Americans. The specific aims are: (1) to solicit and select the most meritorious research proposals for PESC funding; (2) to provide investigators of PESC studies with access to resources from the other OAIC Cores; (3) to identify potential opportunities for co-sponsorship of PESC studies; (4) to identify potential opportunities for collaboration among PESC investigators; (5) to monitor the progress of the PESC studies; (6) to provide assistance so that the PESC studies can be successfully developed into independently funded grant applications; (7) to ensure the safety and protection of human subjects enrolled in PESC studies; and (8) to ensure that PESC studies enroll a substantial proportion of underrepresented minorities. The PESC will provide an invaluable mechanism for investigators to obtain preliminary data for promising basic science, translational, clinical, epidemiologic and intervention studies taking a multifactorial approach to the study of geriatric health conditions. Such studies investigate the interactions among or intervene on the multiple predisposing and precipitating factors that are responsible for many of the health conditions affecting older persons, which, in turn, have effects on multiple domains of health..Studies funded through the PESC will take full advantage of the resources and expertise available from the Field, Data Management & Informatics, and Biostatistics Cores. Priority for PESC funding will be given to junior investigators as well as to accomplished mid career and senior investigators who wish to redirect or expand their research to the study of multifactorial geriatric health conditions.
