The next generation of population researchers must be prepared to meet the challenges of integrating social, behavioral, and biomedical research perspectives to address the health and welfare of the population. Developing multidisciplinary research teams requires an understanding of the perspectives of the different disciplines, and gaining the basic training in those disciplines and how to integrate them is critical. The overall goal of the proposed training program is to equip current and future population researchers with the skills needed to address the multidisciplinary challenges of this new research agenda. Specific activities to achieve these training goals include: (1) develop a semester-long course at the graduate level that integrates demographic, epidemiological, and biomedical approaches to the collection, analysis, and interpretation of biomarkers in the context of large-scale sample surveys such as the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health; (2) condense the semester-long course into an intensive one-week summer course targeted to population research professionals who are interested in gaining the practical knowledge to integrate collection of biomarkers into their research; (3) enhance the existing Carolina Population Center Biomedical Core website to make the information used in both of these courses more broadly available to the population research community; (4) develop an undergraduate intern program that focuses on attracting and preparing under-represented minorities for future research at the intersection of the population and health sciences. ? ? ?
