The primary purpose of the proposed program is to provide advanced training for conducting descriptive and analytic (etiological) epidemiologic studies of the health, functioning, and well being of older persons. The broad orientation of the program is that of psychosocial epidemiology. The orientation combines concepts and techniques from the social and behavioral sciences with the rigorous application of quantitative epidemiologic methods. The interplay of clinical/biomedical and social/psychological influences on health provides the conceptual focus of this interdisciplinary training. Primary disciplines represented are: social and health psychology, medical sociology, psychiatry, medicine, epidemiology, and biostatistics. The emphasis is on advanced training and the training is tailor-made for each trainee. The primary method of training consists of: a) didactic instruction in the coursework which is at the center of the PhD in (chronic disease) epidemiology program at Yale, and b) the closely supervised research experience in the context of existing research programs and studies being carried out by the training faculty. We are now starting the 15th year of this training program at Yale. From the beginning, the program has represented a balance of pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training and was based on close collaboration with faculty in the Geriatrics section of the Department of Medicine at Yale. Over the last decade, the Geriatrics section has grown tremendously in strength of the faculty and the size of the research portfolio. Most significantly, the section now has its own training grant, AG 19134, Research Training in Geriatric Clinical Epidemiology, M. Tinetti, P.I. At the same time, the aging training program in the Department of Epidemiology has lost some faculty over the last decade. Because of these developments, in this competing renewal application we are proposing to scale down the training program. Specifically, we request support for four pre-doctoral trainees and no support for post-doctoral slots. The trainees will be primarily Ph.D. candidates in (chronic disease) epidemiology. In addition, Ph.D. candidates in biostatistics who will work with our biostatistics faculty on developing new techniques for the analysis of longitudinal data on older persons will also be eligible for support.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 49 publications
