The Carolina Population Center (CPC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill requests continued support for the NIA-supported Demography of Aging and the Life Course training program as part of a long-standing training program in interdisciplinary population research. Beginning its 16th year in May 2004, the NIA-supported training is a strong program of modest size that fills a special and relatively neglected niche in the spectrum of programs for training in the demography of aging. In addition to training in more traditional gerontological research and demographic methods, our program provides strong support for the study of aging in the context of the life course and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The 55 faculty Fellows of the Carolina Population Center hold primary appointments in 16 departments of UNC Chapel Hill and provide an unusually rich environment for interdisciplinary research. In addition, Center research support services for trainees and faculty are truly outstanding. CPC faculty fellows considered core faculty in this application come from the fields of Sociology, Economics, Epidemiology, Nutrition, Health Policy and Administration, and Biostatistics, and the core is growing. Many faculty from other UNC departments with aging interests are available for consultation by our trainees, and the UNC Institute of Aging is an important addition to our already-rich resource base. All CPC pre-doctoral trainees are subject to the same basic application review, but NIA-supported trainees have course requirements in aging as well as population. All CPC pre-docs are registered in doctoral programs at UNC-CH and must meet departmental, as well as CPC requirements. Each works at least twelve hours per week under the supervision of a faculty fellow preceptor on a research practicum, participates in the weekly CPC interdisciplinary population research seminar and other seminars, meets center requirements for training in the ethical conduct of research, and writes a dissertation approved as relevant to the demography of aging and the life course. Post-doctoral trainees are admitted through a competitive process directly to the Center and receive individualized training from selected faculty preceptors. Key to both pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training at CPC is a one-to-one relationship between trainee and faculty preceptor and trainee-faculty collaboration on relevant research.
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