The overall goal of the TRAC Center is to enhance the capacity for nurse investigators to examine patterns of health, illness, and care among the elderly over time and across diverse settings, including home and institution.
Specific aims are to: 1)Study the influence of biopsychosocial and environmental factors on patterns of health in later life as a basis for developing innovative approaches to optimizing trajectories of aging and care. 2) Develop approaches aimed at improving the efficacy of interventions to prevent disease or declines in function, promote recovery from illness and restoration of function, support and enhance where possible, the dying process, and help older adults attain or maintain a high quality of life. 3)Enhance the productivity of both new and established nurse scientists engaged in research related to trajectories of aging and care. 4)Develop new collaborative research on factors influencing trajectories of aging and care and expand existing collaboration with investigators from the Gerontological Nursing Research Center at the University of Iowa and other NINR Research centers. A Pilot/Feasibility Studies Core will support the development, review, and timely completion of high merit pilot/feasibility studies focused on trajectories of aging and care. An Administrative Core will integrate and coordinate all components of the Center, and provide both training and consultation in longitudinal research design and analysis, and streamlined access to longitudinal databases to study factors that influence health and care trajectories in later life, providing an empirical basis for identifying potential targets for nursing intervention. The TRAC Center will bring together nurse scientists and leading investigators from a variety of disciplines to conduct nurse directed interdisciplinary studies that will strengthen the scientific basis for designing and testing interventions that optimize trajectories of health, illness and care in later life, to increase the likelihood that premature decline in health status is avoided, that inevitable decline is understood by patients and families, and that avoidable adverse outcomes are recognized and targeted for intervention.
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