We propose an Edward R. Roybal Center for Translational Research on Chronic Disease Self-Management among Vulnerable Older Adults (IU-Roybal). The IU-Roybal would support the infrastructure to maintain a feedback loop between basic and applied areas of social and behavioral science. This infrastructure will allow us to translate social science innovations into practical clinical applications in day-to-day provision of health care for older adults. In turn, health care providers in these clinical sites will feedback problems, ideas, and needs for new use-inspired basic research. We have successfully achieved this scientific feedback loop for short periods of time for individual research projects over the past decade. With the resources of the IU-Roybal, we would have the capacity to stabilize this feedback loop over a sustained period of time. Such a sustained infrastructure would allow us to attract new investigators, new community partners, and new clinical sites to improve the health and functioning of older adults. The projects proposed this application use ecological models of physician-patient-health system collaboration to improve self-management education and support for chronic conditions among vulnerable older adults. Our primary objective is facilitation of research on improving support and education for self-management among vulnerable older adults cared for by generalist physicians. This proposal builds upon our twelve-year history of support from the NIA in building a research program focused on improving the quality of life of vulnerable older adults. We seek to transform our program into a national resource. Each of the three proposed pilot projects focus on strategies to improve knowledge utilization in the primary care environment through improved collaboration between patients, physicians, and the health care system. We also propose a new partnership with the Indiana Medicaid Office and State Department of Health to allow application of our findings to the statewide population of vulnerable elders.
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