The OAIC will support research in seriously ill older adults or what we will call geriatric palliative care research. The goal of the Leadership and Administrative Core (LAC) is to provide, not only administrative coordination and oversight of the other cores, but also the vision and leadership needed to advance and to translate research in geriatric palliative care to improved care of older persons with serious illness. The objectives of the LAC are: a) to foster and support scientific innovation for older adults with serious illness; b) to assist, oversee and coordinate the work of the other cores in the identification, selection, and mentoring of OAIC junior faculty investigators, pilot and exploratory studies, and in allocating and coordinating support from 2 resource cores and a new information and Dissemination Core; c) to integrate and to facilitate interchange among the cores, investigators, and programs involved in the OAIC; and d) to provide administrative and communications support, coordination of human subjects review, and fiscal management. The LAC approaches the work of advancing research in geriatric palliative care and its translation by considering the full range of translational research but also through an innovative comprehensive framework of connected and coordinated activities that starts with creating a pipeline of trainees, supporting their research development, providing infrastructure and resources for research, nurturing and facilitating collaborative research, and ends with targeted efforts to disseminate the work to improve the life of older persons and their families. The LAC brings together expertise in research, research career mentoring, program building and dissemination and leverages national resources and successful local programs, including the National Palliative Care Research Center. In doing this, we continue many of the successful activities of the currently funded Center and introduce several new initiatives in this renewal, including a) the formation of a Pepper PAlliative care GEriatric Research (PAGER) Network to support geriatric palliative care research across the Pepper Center network; b) a sequence of pilot activities leading to the formation of dataset(s) for Medicare beneficiaries with a mix of selected serious life-limiting illnesses; c) activities leading to a new item bank that could be used for creating a measure that reduces respondent burden; and d) a dissemination core to translate research into practice building on successful dissemination programs in the Center to Advance Palliative Care. By strategically leveraging resources and building on other successful programs, the LAC maximizes the impact of a modest investment to create a core that is comprehensive in scope, significant in its local impact, and national in its reach.
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