Building Trust to Enhance Diversity in Aging Research

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Aging Research focuses on aging processes, age-related diseases, and special problems and needs of older adults. Aging Research helps us to understand the nature of aging and how best to extend the healthy, active years of life. Greater diversity among the populations engaged in Aging Research studies is essential in order to understand the complex relationships among health status and age, race, physical functioning (and physical impairment), culture, and socioeconomic status. The proposed project will foster a community-academic Aging Research collaborative that promotes trust and develops recruitment and retention methods to increase the diversity of older adult participants in clinical studies of aging Achieving greater diversity in clinical research study populations involving older adults is desirable and feasible, yet comes at a cost. Our proposed study of recruitment methods will help answer the question, “Can we identify evidenced-based recruitment methods that are both effective (successfully recruit populations underrepresented in clinical research) and efficient (provide a reasonable return on investment) in recruiting and retaining underrepresented populations in clinical studies of aging?” We will accomplish this by building the infrastructure necessary to support methodological research in partnership with community organizations with whom we have worked on prior multiyear federal grants, including an R24 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The project aims are: Aim 1: Foster a community-academic Aging Research collaborative that promotes trust and develops recruitment and retention methods to increase the diversity of older adult participants in clinical studies of aging Aim 2: Engage diverse older adults, their community-based health care providers, and investigators in a manner that facilitates bi-directional learning for future Aging Research studies Aim 2a: Move older adults along the willingness to participate in research continuum Aim 2b: Enhance the cultural competence of investigators studying aging and by doing so promote trustworthiness of Aging Research studies by community members Aim 3: Guided by co-developed ethical principles, facilitate the enrollment of three difficult-to- recruit subpopulations: older African Americans, older adults with impairments (hearing, vision, mobility), and those who are homebound into a Registry