Conference grant application to support American Psychosomatic Society's 75th Annual Scientific Meeting

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Providing strong support and guidance to promising pre- and post-doctoral students is crucial for the advancement of all fields of science. The overall goal of this NIA-supported R13 is to provide travel support for trainees to attend and actively take part in the 75th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society (APS) in Seville, Spain (March 15-18, 2017). The essential mission of the APS is to promote and advance the scientific understanding of the interrelationships among biological, psychological, social and behavioral factors in human health and disease, and the integration of the fields of science that separately examine each, and to foster the application of this understanding in education and improved health care. This mission is instantiated in the selection of the theme for the 2017 meeting, “Mobilizing Technology to Advance Biobehavioral Science and Health,” which will highlight empirical research, applied methodology, and clinical applications along the translational continuum, with an emphasis on dissemination and public policy. For greater than 7 decades, the annual APS meeting has provided an outstanding forum for trainees and established investigators and clinicians working within a wide range of disciplines and specialty areas to exchange new ideas and research strategies that ultimately facilitate and improve the quality of research and its translation into clinical practice and public policy. The annual APS meeting is attended by over 500 researchers and clinicians from around the world. Previously supported by NHLBI for 12 years (R13 HL074923), APS has obtained the support of NIA for the 75th anniversary meeting to broaden its emphasis on research and training in biological, psychosocial, and behavioral mechanisms of health and disease across the lifespan. In fact, the thematic undercurrent of much of the research and training opportunities offered at the meeting reflect mechanisms of accelerated aging and their effect modifiers including indices of resilience and vulnerability. Planned NIA-related programming for the 2017 meeting includes a keynote address by Sir Michael Marmot, an invited symposium on mobile technology in health care and research, emphasizing diseases of aging, and an invited symposium on Hispanic health across the lifespan. Regular presenters who highlight a lifespan approach to psychosomatic medicine research and have been NIA grantees include luminaries such as Drs. Michael Irwin, Redford Williams, Andrew Steptoe, Karen Matthews, Elissa Epel, Julian Thayer, and Stephen Manuck. Increasingly, this conference has also highlighted sleep health in relation to aging including allostatic load, cellular and molecular indices of aging, cellular senescence, and diseases of aging. Secondary support is also requested from other institutes (e.g., NCI, NHLBI, NCCIH) given the diversity of disciplines and specialties represented at this meeting. For example, the Hispanic health symposium will include presentations relevant to cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. Confirmed speakers for the Hispanic health symposium are rising stars in disparities research across the lifespan including Drs. Shakir Suglia, Carmela Alcantara, and Frank Penedo; notably, each of these individuals is also from an underrepresented minority. We will also sponsor an invited symposium and roundtable luncheon that addresses new guidelines for statistical significance and replication. Confirmed speakers include Dr. Jessica Utts, President of the American Statistical Association and Chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Meredith Wallace, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, Daniel Lakens, of the Human-Technology Interaction at the Eidenhoven University of Technology. The symposium will include a moderated discussion with the speakers, journal representatives, and interactive discussion with the audience, facilitated by Sli.Do technology. There is no other comparable scientific meeting that overlaps with the content of the annual APS meeting, including its training opportunities. In this application, we propose to provide support for up to 10 Young Scholar Awards and 3 Minority Initiative Travel Awards. The Young Scholars Award Program will provide travel awards to competitively-selected trainees who submit a first-author abstract to present a paper or poster and who are judged to show outstanding potential for a career in psychosomatic and behavioral medicine. The APS Minority Initiative Travel Award will provide support for promising trainees from racial/ethnic or other underrepresented groups to attend the annual meeting. The process of identifying and selecting APS Minority Initiative Travel Award recipients will differ, as this award seeks to extend trainee award opportunities to individuals who are not yet “stakeholders” in the process.