This R13 application requests partial support for two workshops that will be the first of a series offered by The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and the John A. Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative (HGSWI). Each workshop in the series will examine a topic representing an arena of community-based practice where organizations have the potential to widely implement evidence- based interventions. Knowledge on each topic will be at a different point of development for improving care in real-world settings Thus, across all topics, the workshop objectives are to: 1) assess and clarify the state of translational research and identify the next logical steps """"""""in translation,"""""""" whether that be treatment development, treatment adaptation, implementation or dissemination research;2) identify opportunities and challenges for translational work from the perspective of community partners;and 3) explore interdisciplinary and agency partnerships to move this work forward. Experts in dissemination and implementation science, gerontologists currently involved in translational studies on the topic, and representatives of the community- based perspective will present. The topics of the first two workshops, to be offered as preconference workshops at the GSA annual conferences in 2013 and 2014, are family caregiving to persons with dementia and aging with disability. Subsequent topics will likely include elder abuse, vulnerable older workers, end-of-life care, and GLBT older adults, to be finalized by the PIs and advisors. Participants will be solicited from GSA members with a particular focus on members of the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative and the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research. Funds are budgeted to support eight junior investigators per workshop, who will also participate in a poster event in conjunction with an opening reception. Outcomes for each workshop include a symposium in the general GSA program and a summary of the workshop's proceedings and findings to be distributed widely. We also aim to produce a publication deriving from the first two workshops. These workshops will increase participants'capacity to successfully respond to the growing number of calls for translational work, like NIA's PA 11-123 and PAS 11-281 and NIH's PAR 10-038. We believe that this project is unique in several ways: selecting a series of topics highly relevant to community-based practice;learning from national experts on implementation and dissemination science;honing in on the current state of translational work;and ensuring the perspective of community-based organizations. Although there have been many conferences on these aging topics, we do not believe that there have been other conferences that have approached the problem of moving knowledge into practice in this fashion.
The gap between the development of evidence-based interventions and the use of those interventions in real-world settings has been widely noted, and there have been numerous calls to accelerate the movement of effective interventions to diverse settings and populations. The proposed workshops seek to energize and focus applied researchers to translate knowledge into widespread and sustainable practices in community-based organizations serving older adults. This effort represents a unique systematic attempt to increase the use of evidence-based practices in community-based organizations serving vulnerable older adults.
