. ,V The long-term objective ofthe Research Career Development Core (RCDC) is the establishment of a core of well-trained, highly motivated junior faculty who will become leaders and mentors in scholarship on frailty and its translation into the prevention and amelioration of frailty in older adults. The RCDC accomplishes this objective through progress through five specific aims: 1) It partners with the Leadership Council ofthe LAC to identify, attract, and select outstanding junior faculty from a variety of disciplines with the interest and potential to become future leaders in the field of frailty and preservation of independence for older adults. 2) It provides the research infrastructure, salary support and protected time essential to enable the selected faculty to successfully bridge the critical transition between fellowship and independent grant funding. 3) It provides mentorship with both team-based and one-on-one elements so as to promote, benchmark, and assure research progress and career development. 4) It designs for each supported individual a program of subject-area, methodological and leadership training to equip him/her for their career goals, and promotes its successful completion. 5) It creates a welcoming academic home and 'stimulus zone'for junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and predoctoral students invested in frailty-related scholarship through forums for ongoing networking and intellectual enrichment between RCDC-supported investigators and all other OAIC supported investigators including monthly research-in-progress sessions and sponsorship of working group meetings, seminars and guest lecturers in collaboration with partnering institutional resources on aging. Resources are prioritized, first, to K-eligible individuals, followed by R-eligible individuals and then to other trainees so as to direct Core efforts to support at a key transitional point, when research careers are often in jeopardy because of lack of funding and research infrastructure. The leadership of this Core and the OAIC as a whole will continue to emphasize training across disciplines and toward translation between basic science and clinical investigation. The Core aims to produce aging- and frailty-focused independent investigators who will lead research whose application will improve independence in older adults.
Frailty is a frequent adverse outcome of .aging which makes older adults vulnerable to many other adverse outcomes including loss of independence. As a syndrome with a complex etiology, its study requires a multidisciplinary cadre of dedicated, expert scholars who will determine its etiology and methods to ameliorate it. Thus this Core's development of junior researchers with the interdisciplinary skills to lead in the needed discovery stand to improve health and quality of life for millions in our expanding older population.
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