This Center proposal is to request infrastructure, networking, administrative, and pilot project support to make a large number of NIA research projects ongoing at the Center for Demographic Studies (CDS) more cost effective, to more widely disseminate the technical products of the research, and to plan and extend the scope of research activities at the Center. This proposal builds on over 20 years of productive research conducted at CDS -- most for the National Institute on Aging. The substantive areas that the Center project will focus on or relate to the estimation and forecasting of active life expectancy (ALE) (i.e., the modeling of changes in the morbidity, disability, and mortality of the U.S. elderly and oldest-old population over time), the development of medical demography, the examination of how changes in ALE might be influenced by interventions in nutrition and physical activity, how changes in ALE are influenced by the provision of acute and LTC health services, how those relations might be affected by different versions of health care reform, and how special population groups (e.g., the oldest- old, minorities, women) might be differentially impacted by such changes. The research team assembled is experienced and represents many disciplines: demographers, medical sociologists, actuaries, policy analysts, health economists, biologists, genetic epidemiologists, biomathematicians, and biostatisticians. It has a strong record in both methodological development as well as substantive research. As an instrument to organize Center activities it is proposed that four core activities be performed; two mandatory (an administrative core and a program development pilot project core) and two optional (a networking and a research resource dissemination core). The Center grant will build upon a number of basic data and methodological assets developed at CDS. In particular the 1982, 1984, 1989, and 1994 NLTCS data base will be further developed for both internal research (e.g., investigation of home care) and external use. In addition, certain software systems will be disseminated. The Center will take advantage of a well established hardware and software computing infrastructure and support from university resources for our activities.
