Developing Interdisciplinary Research Centers for Improving RAND Corporation

Grant Summary

The John A. Hartford Foundation has supplemented a prior grant to the RAND-University of Pittsburgh Health Institute, a branch of the internationally respected research firm, to provide funding for two additional Interdisciplinary Research Centers in Geriatrics, which will bring together faculty members from medicine, nursing, social work, and related disciplines to pursue new directions in health services and clinical research for older people. Interdisciplinary research is vital to improving the care of older people, whose complex needs require the integration of social, psychological, and biological elements. In 2005, the Foundation awarded $2 million for the second national competition to establish five Interdisciplinary Research Centers in Geriatrics at academic institutions, now bringing the total of funded centers to seven. This grant will support the addition of two Interdisciplinary Research Centers in Geriatrics to create a total of seven centers at Cornell University, New York University, the University of California-San Francisco, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Missouri-Columbia, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Washington. Funds will be used to bring together the skills and perspectives of multiple disciplines, conduct pilot research studies, and develop the careers of junior faculty members so as to create leaders in the field of aging. Care for the elderly inherently requires a multidisciplinary approach to meet all of the complex, interactive needs of older patients. thus, there is a great need for research on aging that is interdisciplinary in nature. Since there is a likelihood that interdisciplinary research will produce some of the future breakthrough treatments for complex medical issues and multiple chronic diseases, there is a need to establish a critical mass of researchers in multiple disciplines prepared to work collaboratively. Establishing these working groups with pilot research projects also positions them well to compete for large federal research grants. Under a previous grant to RAND-University of Pittsburgh Health Institute in 2001, five centers were funded: Duke University, Boston University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, San Francisco.