HABS-HD - Core G - Development Core

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HABS-HD DEVELOPMENT CORE - ABSTRACT There is a disproportionate burden of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and AD related disorders (ADRDs) among underrepresented groups (URGs), especially African American and Hispanic populations. This excess AD/ADRD morbidity, and its attendant socioeconomic costs, is expected to get even larger given that older URG adults are a rapidly expanding segment of the U.S. population. Specifically, epidemiological projections indicate that by 2060 the U.S. will become considerably “non-white,” as reflected by a 42% increase in the percentage of African Americans and a 114% increase in the percentage of persons of Hispanic origin, compared to an 8.2% decrease in the proportion of non-Hispanic whites. In light of this reality of an increasingly diverse U.S., it is imperative to curate educational opportunities that foster the training of a diverse workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral, clinical and translational needs in AD/ADRDs. Such opportunities would help ensure the availability of a pipeline of ethnoculturally/linguistically diverse and culturally competent professionals prepared to study, evaluate, diagnose, and treat URG older adults with ADRDs. The need for such an initiative, at this point in time, is further underscored by the fact that despite ongoing efforts at the federal level to facilitate the participation of URGs in research careers, underrepresentation remains a persistent problem as evidenced by recent reports from the National Science Foundation and others showing, as an example, that persons from a URG background comprise only 5% of tenure-track neuroscience faculty despite making up a significantly larger slice of the U.S. population. Therefore, the overarching objective of the Development Core of the Health & Aging Brain Study – Health Disparities (HABS-HD) is to recruit, support, and provide targeted mentored training to an annual cohort of URG trainees (graduate/professional students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career investigators, to be known as HABS-HD Fellows) to ensure their research proficiency and cultural competency. We will equip them with the conceptual knowledgebase, practical skillset, and allied resources that will be beneficial for launching successful independent research careers in the AD/ADRD field. Trainees from a non-URG background who have a commitment to health disparities research will also be considered for this mentorship opportunity, as our ultimate goal is to address the current lack of an ethnoculturally/linguistically diverse and culturally competent AD/ADRD workforce. To address our objective, the Development Core will address the following Specific Aims: Aim 1: Deliver a targeted mentored training program to ensure research proficiency and cultural competency. Aim 2. Measure the effectiveness of the HABS-HD mentored training program.