The purpose of this core is to develop networking between groups of investigators involved in research on related areas of aging. The Center for Demographic Studies is fortunate to have collaborative arrangements with a number of groups that would form the basis for such networking activities. The first two network groups (ODEN and the group developed by Professor Myers on longitudinal studies) involve the development of jointly sponsored conferences. The contributions from the collaborating institution for the conferences with the Odense School of Medicine and the organizations collaborating with Professor Myers thus represent """"""""leveraging"""""""" of NIA funds to support more extensive networking. The first network (ODEN) involves the aging research unit at the Odense Medical School in Denmark and CDS. The primary activity of the network would be to foster multidisciplinary research by sponsoring a series of four workshops on the oldest-old. Two would be held in Denmark and supported by the Danish Research Council. Two would be held at CDS and would be supported by this Center project. A second network would be created by selected investigators from the REVES group who are attempting to conduct longitudinal studies. These workshops would be sponsored, one at Duke, one in Italy, and one in Geneva, Switzerland by the ECE. The topics of the workshops would be to develop longitudinal studies, and their analysis, in a coordinated fashion. The third networking activity, with researchers from Syracuse University (Professor Doug Wolf), would be to develop forecasting models of U.S. LTC needs. This project will be supported by an NIA project with researchers at CDS having responsibility for developing the health transition model from the 1982, 1984, 1989, and 1994 NLTCS. The fourth networking activity is with WHO as their coordinating center for the development of health forecasts. The fifth activity would be the collaboration with SOLON, Inc., on the development of specialized data dissemination and analytic software.
