Center for Aging and Policy Studies

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Project Summary/Abstract for the Center for Aging and Policy Studies (CAPS) The overarching goal of the Center for Aging and Policy Studies (CAPS) is to improve the health, well-being, and independence of older adults by directly addressing some of today’s most pressing issues facing middle- age and older adults and the families that care for them. Scientific research at CAPS focuses on two signature themes of health and well-being and family and intergenerational supports and three cross-cutting themes of policy, place, and specific populations. These signature themes are long-standing and essential areas of study, while the cross-cutting themes have emerged as critical determinants of older adult health, well-being, and independence. Significantly, by emphasizing policy and place as cross-cutting themes, CAPS brings a distinctive and vital dimension to the NIA Centers on the Demography and Economics of Aging program. The innovative organizational approach of CAPS provides a firm foundation for achieving its overarching goal. First, CAPS will use a hub-and-spoke operational model encompassing three R1 institutions in Upstate New York with a long history of collaboration on the demography and economics of aging. Syracuse University will serve as the hub, with nearby Cornell University and the University at Albany–State University of New York as the spokes. Guided by state-of-the-art principles of collaborative management, this model combines the benefits of both a brick-and-mortar Center and a virtual network that is nimble, cost-effective, and wide-reaching. Second, CAPS will have a strong, multi-disciplinary, five-person leadership team comprised of scientific leaders experienced in directing NIH-funded Centers and cross-site programs. Third, CAPS will offer a strategically selected and tightly coordinated set of activities across its Administrative Core, Pilot Core, and Dissemination Core. CAPS will achieve its goal through three overall specific aims. Aim 1 is to foster innovative and interdisciplinary research on CAPS signature and cross-cutting themes. CAPS will achieve this aim through multiple dynamic activities, including its integrated pilot project program; teaming program featuring a research incubator; and visiting scholars program. Aim 2 is to enhance human capital in population-based aging research among emerging, underrepresented, and established scholars. CAPS will provide numerous opportunities for scientific development among CAPS affiliates and non-affiliates, including an onsite-online colloquium series, grant writing workshops, and workshops on new methods related to CAPS thematic areas. Aim 3 is to advance understanding of the latest population-based aging research by disseminating findings and data resources to scientists, practitioners, decision makers, and the public. CAPS will draw on the communications expertise at its three sites, and their extensive social media reach, to disseminate information that is timely and broadly accessible. Contributing to the greater scientific enterprise, CAPS will promote the use of its primary data collection through data user sessions at national conferences and by coordinating with other NIA-funded Centers to link CAPS place-based data to existing survey data on older adults.