USC Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (US-RCMAR)

今天，医学和技术的进步正在为人们提供更长寿、更健康的生活。越来越多的美国家庭被要求为自己的健康和财务结果负责：工作多久，存多少钱，何时申请社会保障和养老金福利，选择哪种健康计划，以及如何分配和管理他们的资产。对于少数族裔老年人来说，做出这些复杂的选择可能尤其困难，从而导致次优结果。事实上，根据《2010年健康人》的分析，健康指标表明，在过去十年中，不同种族和族裔人口之间的健康差距几乎没有改善。证据还表明，少数族裔家庭往往被排除在金融主流之外，或者只参与金融主流的边缘。为此，我们建议在南加州大学建立一个RCMAR，它将开发一个基础设施，以实现以下具体目标：提供领导、组织、沟通和评估系统，以实现在少数民族老年人健康和经济挑战方面支持高质量和持久的研究事业的总体目标；2. 支持试点研究的征集和甄选过程，以确保甄选的试点项目在科学上严谨、资金充足，并增强研究人员的多样性；3. 通过在经济学、计算机科学、医学和社会工作的方法和工具方面的多学科指导和培训，支持试点研究人员实现试点研究目标，并授予独立拨款；4. 分析关于不同老年人的健康、医疗保健和支出、经济状况和财务决策的大型纵向调查数据集和医疗索赔数据，以便产生解决健康和经济差异的干预措施；5. 跟踪和评估试点调查和数据分析的成功，并根据评估结果改进基础设施支持。这个拟议的RCMAR是南加州大学和兰德公司之间的合作，利用了南加州大学皇家卫生政策模拟中心、皇家老龄化研究所、阿尔茨海默病研究中心和兰德公司皇家金融决策中心的资源。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) Advances in medicine and technology are providing for longer and healthier lives today. American families have increasingly been asked to take responsibility for their own health and financial outcomes: how long to work, how much to save, when to claim Social Security and pension benefits, which health plans to choose, and how to allocate and manage their assets. Navigating these complex choices may be particularly difficult for minority elderly, leading to suboptimal outcomes. Indeed, health indicators have demonstrated little improvement in health disparities between different racial and ethnic populations over the past decade, according to analyses in Healthy People 2010. Evidence also suggests that minority households tend to be excluded from or participate only on the margins of the financial mainstream. To this end we propose to establish a RCMAR at USC that will develop an infrastructure to achieve the following Specific Aims: 1. Provide leadership, organizational, communication and evaluation systems to achieve the overarching goal of supporting high-quality and enduring research careers in the health and economic challenges of minority elderly; 2. Support pilot study solicitation and selection process to ensure the selection of scientifically rigorous and fundable pilot projects and enhancement of the diversity of researchers; 3. Support pilot-funded investigators through achievement of pilot studies goals and award of an independent grant by multidisciplinary mentoring and training in the methods and tools of economics, computer science, medicine, and social work; 4. Analyze large longitudinal survey data sets and medical claims data on the health, medical care and expenditures, economic status, and financial decisions of diverse elderly populations in order to generate interventions that will address health and economic disparities; 5. Track and evaluate the successes of pilot investigators and data analysis and improve the infrastructure support in accordance with evaluation findings. This proposed RCMAR is a collaboration between USC and RAND that utilizes the resources of USC's Roybal Center on Health Policy Simulation, Roybal Institute on Aging, Alzheimer Disease Research Center, and RAND's Roybal Center for Financial Decision making.