RAND Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists

描述(由申请人提供)：自1998年以来，兰德在加利福尼亚州圣莫尼卡举办了一所小型社会科学家医学院(Mini-Med)，其动机是认识到，如果有可靠的生物医学基础，关于衰老的行为和社会研究更有见识，最终也更有用。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--往往回避生物医学问题。虽然Mini-Med没有完全弥补这一不足，但它确实让年轻的社会科学家接触到生物医学问题，以刺激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包括为期两天的一系列讲座，由国内和国际专家就老龄化研究人员感兴趣的各种生物医学主题进行。这次活动与第二个关于人口统计学、经济学和老龄化流行病学的研讨会一起举行。将这两个研讨会结合起来，既减少了组织费用，又有助于吸引原本可能不会参加这两个项目的学者。过去的参与者包括大学的高级和初级教师，老龄领域的博士后和博士后实习生，以及来自非营利性基金会和机构的研究人员。过去的讲座涵盖了各种主题，如衰老过程、遗传学和生物学，以及影响老年人的特定疾病，如癌症、痴呆症、心血管疾病和糖尿病。每一堂课都强调医学知识，这将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.