Now in its 27th year, the NIA Demography and Economics of Aging Centers Program has been successful in accomplishing the main objectives of developing both innovative lines of research and the next generation of scholars in the demography and economics of aging. The field of aging has expanded rapidly over this period, and the D&E Centers have played a key role. New areas and new directions have emerged (e.g., population genetics, biomeasure collection within national population-based surveys), largely as a result of increasing cross- disciplinary collaborations encouraged by the Centers. The D&E Centers Coordinating Center has been a keystone in this research infrastructure, promoting synergy and efficiency and maximizing the effectiveness and impact of the Program overall. This is achieved through the functions of the Coordinating Center, which serves as the nexus of communication, streamlining information-sharing across the D&E Centers, with NIA, and to the public. The Coordinating Center has been housed at the University of Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA) for nearly the entire history of the Program. This proposal builds on the successful model instituted by the MiCDA Coordinating Center to create a new independent Coordinating Center, with all the advantage of established connections, significant substantive expertise, and ready infrastructure on which to build and expand. The new Coordinating Center will expand its substantive purview to include Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease Related Dementias (ADRD). To maximize the growth of cross disciplinary research, its mission will also expand to promote collaborative work between the D&E Centers and other NIA Centers, each with different mission, cultures, and ethos. A major thrust of effort will be on supporting early career investigators to embark on collaborations across NIA Centers. Lastly, the Coordinating Center will collaborate with the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) to produce dissemination materials with broad appeal that are aggregated and synthesized research findings from the Centers. Partnering with PRB magnifies the impact of the Program research manifold.
This proposal aims to launch a Coordinating Center to serve the goals of facilitating communication between the NIA Division of Behavioral and Social Research and the Centers on the Demography and Economics of Aging and Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Related Dementias, facilitating collaboration within and across these Centers and other NIA Centers, and disseminating research advances, activities, and resources to a broad audience of stakeholders. Through these efforts, the Coordinating Center significantly magnifies the impact of the Centers activities and findings.
