RAND Mini-Medical School for Social Scientists

描述（由申请人提供）：自 1998 年以来，兰德公司在加利福尼亚州圣莫尼卡主办了一所社会科学家迷你医学院（Mini-Med），其动机是认识到，如果有关衰老的行为和社会研究具有良好的生物医学基础，那么它会更明智，最终更有用。社会科学领域（例如经济学、心理学、人口学和社会学）的传统培训项目通常会避开生物医学问题。虽然 Mini-Med 并不能完全弥补这一缺陷，但它确实让年轻的社会科学家接触生物医学问题，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 包括为期两天的系列讲座，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。该活动还举办了关于人口学、经济学和老龄化流行病学的第二次研讨会。将这两个研讨会结合起来既可以减少组织费用，又可以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、老龄化领域的博士后和博士前实习生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、遗传学和生物学等不同主题，以及影响老年人的特定疾病，如癌症、痴呆、心血管疾病和糖尿病。每场讲座都强调能够改善老年人社会科学研究的医学知识。

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.