V1.3 Release of the State Policy & Politics Database (SPPD)

The SPPD is a compilation of annual data on state policies and politics that are particularly relevant for population health. The SPPD includes several categories of policies, including labor and economic policies, social safety net policies, and behavior-related policies, as well as the political ideology of states’ government and citizens. In V1.3, most variables are available annually from 1980 through 2023 or 2024. The SPPD is funded by the NIA P30 Center for Aging and Policy Studies. It can be accessed as a stand-alone dataset (https://asi.syr.edu/caps/data-resources/) and it can merged with geocoded survey datasets such as the HRS, PSID, and NHATS through the Virtual Data Enclave at the University of Michigan (see https://micda.isr.umich.edu/enclave/).

The Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN) goal is to catalyze enduring, collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects across NIA center programs by funding pilot, planning or meeting grants of up to $65,000. Proposals should address topics spanning the missions of multiple NIA Center programs. Relevant topics are exemplified by the themes of RCCN-sponsored workshops, but other topics relevant to the NIA center programs will also be considered. Each project should involve at least two NIA-sponsored research centers. There are two deadlines annually and up to two awards will be granted each cycle.

The revised RFA for the RCCN Pilot Awards allows for a wider variety of topics, including those not previously covered by an RCCN Workshop, and has added a new letter of intent stage for applicants. Review the new RFA here. Please reach out to [email protected] with any questions.

LOI Deadlines: April 1 and October 1.

Application Deadline: March 25

The tenth workshop, Nutrition and Aging Biology, will be held June 25 and 26, 2024 in San Francisco, CA. The scope of the workshop is broad and includes these themes: Caloric Restriction’s Effect on Lifespan and Healthspan, Intake Timing, Treating Obesity in Older Adults, and Other Approaches and Considerations.

Travel Awards are available for approximately 10 early career investigators or investigators in training, who will participate in a special session at the meeting on June 25, that will focus on career development. The travel awards will cover travel to and from the meeting, meals, and hotel accommodations. Successful applicants will be affiliated with institutions with at least one NIA-supported center, and will have demonstrated translational or multidisciplinary interests in aging related to the workshop topic. The deadline to apply is Monday, March 25.

View the RFA (PDF)

CAPS Texas Center on Aging and Population Sciences Proposal Deadline: February 16, 2024

We invite investigators to submit proposals for pilot funding to support research projects focused on LGBTQ+ population aging. These pilot research projects would be funded for the period from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026. Pilot projects may be funded up to $40,000 in direct costs. Guidelines for the proposal format are indicated below.

Note that we will be submitting these proposals in 2024 to be funded in the summer of 2025, 15 months later.

Questions may be addressed to:
Karen Fingerman, [email protected] or Debra Umberson, [email protected]

Submit proposals to [email protected]
Subject: Attn: Pilot Project Proposal

Pilot Project Goals

We seek cutting-edge research to illuminate how biological, psychosocial, and environmental factors intersect throughout the life course to generate disparities in health and well-being at older ages in LGBTQ+ populations. The focus of these pilot proposals is limited to LGBTQ+ populations and aging.

Proposals will be given priority that address:

Life course precursors of later life health and well-being
Family demography, social engagement, and social isolation
Place and health including neighborhoods, geographic region, and other indicators of place

Pilot projects should be designed to support the development of a larger research project that will be submitted under an NIA grant mechanism (R03, R01, R21). Pilot projects are not intended to support work to complete a study or as an addendum to an existing project. NIA considers the success rate of grants submitted from the pilot projects when making decisions about funding future CAPS pilot projects.

Further details and the application process for the pilot projects may be found here.

Our existing pilot projects can be found here: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/caps/research/pilot-projects/pilot-project-awards.html

We are proud to announce that the Gateway to Global Aging Data (Gateway) Team at the University of Southern California is arranging a symposium during the Gerontological Society of America’s 2024 Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington scheduled from November 13 to 16, 2024. The session, titled “Health Impacts of the Social and Physical Environment in Global and Cross-National Studies,” is open for abstract submissions. We invite the submission of abstracts for the symposium that leverage the harmonized datafiles from the Gateway, enabling the execution of single-country or cross-country comparative studies that offer valuable insights into the aging experience worldwide.

If you are interested in submitting an abstract for this symposium, please submit a 250-word abstract to the Gateway team by filling out the application.

The deadline for submission is 11:59 PM (Pacific time) on February 26, 2024. Abstract authors will be notified by March 4th to allow sufficient time to submit before the general GSA submission deadline of March 14th.

Accepted submissions will receive reimbursement for the GSA conference registration fee after the completion of the GSA conference.

For more details, please see GSA’s Call for Abstracts.

If you encounter any issues with completing the Google form, please email the Gateway team at [email protected].

In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, wow, that’s a mouthful, more commonly known as the HITECH Act, spent billions to promote the uptake of electronic health records by US hospitals. Fast forward more than a decade later, and now approximately four out of five healthcare institutions have electronic health record systems in place that integrate clinical notes, test results, medications, diagnostic images, et cetera. The adoption of EHR systems into healthcare introduces new and exciting opportunities to extract information that can be used to augment other types of data for research. As you might imagine though, it can be tricky to pull out meaningful information from the text of clinical notes. In this episode, we’ll speak with a University of Michigan researcher, Dr. Vinod Vydiswaran, who’s been developing methods to identify dementia from EHR data.

You can listen to the episode on the Michigan Medicine Podcasting Network or your favorite podcasting platform (linked here on Apple, Spotify, and Google).

Minding Memory

Episode 5: Dementia as a Global Challenge – the International Partners Study of the HRS

According to an estimate published in 2015, the global prevalence of dementia was projected to nearly triple between 2015 and 2050, growing from 46 million to over 130 million people globally. And of that worldwide share, 70% of those with dementia will be in low- and middle-income countries. Tackling and ideally preventing dementia requires a global perspective. In this episode, Matt & Donovan speak with Dr. Lindsay Kobayashi, a faculty member in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health whose research focuses on the social epidemiology of aging from a global perspective. Dr. Kobayashi introduces us to a whole new world of data available to help researchers tackle dementia as a global challenge. You can listen to the episode, or read the transcript, on the Michigan Medicine Podcasting Network or your favorite podcasting platform (linked here on Apple, Spotify, and Google).

Episode 6: Vision Impairment as a Risk Factor for Dementia

The population of older adults living with dementia is expected to swell to nearly 14 million by 2050 and is estimated to cost the US economy more than 500 billion each year. In the absence of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, the primary cause of dementia, there’s interest in understanding modifiable risk factors. In theory, getting a handle on the modifiable risk factors for dementia, would enable public health efforts to reduce cognitive decline in dementia at the population level. We’ve come a long way in understanding the risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias. However, there’s still work to be done. In this episode, we’ll speak with Dr. Josh Ehrlich, a researcher at the University of Michigan, who has examined vision impairment as a risk factor for dementia. You can listen to the episode, or read the transcript, on the Michigan Medicine Podcasting Network or your favorite podcasting platform (linked here on Apple, Spotify, and Google).

Minding Memory

Episode 3: People Living with Dementia and Exposure to Natural Disasters

Extreme weather and weather-related disasters are becoming more and more common. Unfortunately, disaster related disruptions in healthcare tend to affect the most vulnerable of populations – including older adults living with cognitive impairment. In this episode, Matt & Donovan speak with University of Michigan faculty member, Sue Anne Bell, about how healthcare disruption due to a disaster can affect the population of older adults living with dementia. You can listen to the episode, or read the transcript, on the Michigan Medicine Podcasting Network or your favorite podcasting platform (linked here on Apple, Spotify, and Google).

Episode 4: Dementia at the End of Life

Over thirty percent of individuals living with dementia living in the US each year die either of or with dementia – and almost half of those enrolled in hospice have dementia. As with so many other types of healthcare, there are disparities in both who enrolls in hospice as well as the type of care these individuals receive after enrollment. In this episode, Matt & Donovan talk with Dr. Lauren Hunt from UCSF, an expert in hospice care for persons living with dementia, about dementia at the end of life. You can listen to the episode, or read the transcript, on the Michigan Medicine Podcasting Network or your favorite podcasting platform (linked here on Apple, Spotify, and Google).

Minding Memory

nhats-nsoc DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: January 15, 2024

Purpose
The National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) and the National Study of Caregiving (NSOC), with support from the National Institute on Aging, announce a call for abstracts for conference papers and posters. The goal of this conference is to bring together scholars working with NHATS and/or NSOC who are interested in family, unpaid, and paid care for older adults living with dementia. The conference will be held June 19-20, 2024 in Ann Arbor. We expect to accept approximately 8-10 papers and 8-10 posters and are making plans to invite presenters to submit papers to a special issue. Early career researchers are especially encouraged to apply.

Focus of Conference
We welcome abstracts from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. Papers may compare care for older adults with and without dementia or focus on care for recipients living with dementia. Topics may include, for instance, the effect of care on older adult’s or caregiver’s health and wellbeing, interactions between family and paid caregiving, inequities in access to dementia care, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on caregiving, or the economics of dementia care. Papers that highlight dual perspectives (e.g., using NHATS and NSOC), multiple caregivers (e.g., network focused), the longitudinal features of the data (e.g., using multiple rounds), or contextual linkages to NHATS and/or NSOC are of particular interest.

For further details please see the call for abstracts or the abstract submission portal.

The 2024 Annual Workshop on U.S. State Policies, Population Health, and Aging will be held on May 21, 2024 in person at Syracuse University. The workshop is cosponsored by the Center for Aging and Policy Studies, funded by the National Institute on Aging (P30AG066583), and the Center for Policy Research at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Participants: The workshop is aimed at researchers who study, or are interested in studying, how U.S. state policies affect adult health. Advanced graduate students who are ABD, post-doctoral fellows, and early career researchers and faculty are encouraged to apply. We anticipate providing support for travel expenses (up to $2000) for ten Workshop Fellows.

Objectives: The objective of the workshop is to build the research capacity for examining how U.S. state contexts, and their changes in recent decades, have affected population health across the adult life course. This area of research can be challenging because it is interdisciplinary and requires unique data sources and complex analytic methods. To advance this area of research, the workshop has four aims: 1) foster collaborations among participants from multiple disciplines, 2) showcase methods for dealing with high-dimensional, highly correlated structure of data often needed to analyze the effects of state contexts on health, 3) teach a core type of statistical model for analyzing the effects of state contexts (this year’s focus is Mundlak regression), and 4) facilitate dissemination and translation of this research into policymaking.

Workshop Fellow Application Instructions: The application deadline is February 1, 2024. Before proceeding to the application site, please assemble the following materials into a single pdf: (1) current CV, (2) a one-page statement describing your overall research interests. Please highlight research that you have conducted, or plan to conduct, on the impact of U.S. states on health. Applicants will be notified by March 15, 2024. Any questions, email [email protected].