RAND Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists

描述（由申请人提供）：自1998年以来，兰德公司在加州圣莫尼卡为社会科学家举办了一所小型医学院（Mini-Med），其动机是认识到，如果有健全的生物医学基础，对老龄化的行为和社会研究将得到更好的信息，并最终更有用。传统的社会科学培训项目——如经济学、心理学、人口学和社会学——往往避开生物医学问题。虽然Mini-Med并不能完全弥补这一缺陷，但它确实使年轻的社会科学家接触到生物医学问题，以激励他们进一步研究他们的研究与更大的生物医学领域之间的互补性。Mini-Med由为期两天的系列讲座组成，由国内和国际专家就衰老研究人员感兴趣的各种生物医学主题进行讲座。该活动与第二次关于老龄化的人口、经济和流行病学研讨会一起举行。将这两个研讨会结合起来，既减少了组织费用，又有助于吸引那些可能不参加任何一个项目的学者。过去的参与者包括大学的高级和初级教师，老年学博士后和博士前学员，以及来自非营利基金会和机构的研究人员。过去的讲座涵盖了衰老过程、遗传学、生物学等多种主题，以及癌症、痴呆、心血管疾病、糖尿病等影响老年人的特定疾病。每个讲座都强调医学知识，这些知识可以促进对老年人的社会科学研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Since 1998, RAND has hosted a Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists (Mini-Med) in Santa Monica, California, motivated by the recognition that behavioral and social research on aging is better informed-and ultimately more useful-if it has a sound biomedical basis. Traditional training programs in the social sciences-such as economics, psychology, demography, and sociology-often steer clear of biomedical issues. While Mini-Med does not fully remedy this deficiency, it does expose young social scientists to biomedical issues to stimulate them to further investigate the complementarities between their research and the larger biomedical field. Mini-Med consists of a two-day series of lectures by national and international experts on diverse biomedical topics of interest to researchers in aging. The event is held with a second workshop on the demography, economics, and epidemiology of aging. Combining these two workshops both reduces organizational expenses and serves to attract scholars who might otherwise not attend either program. Past participants have included senior and junior faculty at universities, post-doctoral and pre-doctoral trainees in aging, and researchers from non-profit foundations and institutions. Past lectures have covered such diverse topics as the aging process, genetics, and biology, as well as specific conditions that affect the elderly such as cancer, dementia, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Each lecture emphasizes medical knowledge that would improve social science research on the elderly.