Advancing CBPR to Spearhead Health Improvement for Older Adults
Funded Grant
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There are healthcare gaps in health in multiple older communities, resulting in potentially preventable morbidity and mortality in older adults. Addressing gaps in health and healthcare for older adults requires innovation in aging research at the nexus of geriatric medicine, gerontology, and palliative care research. Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is an important and promising strategy to meet this challenge because it has been shown to, increase trust, and result in positive health outcomes. The goal of this K07 Academic Career Leadership Award is to leverage the applicant’s national leadership in partnering with communities of older adults using Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) to create a sustainable training, mentoring, an incubator program in CBPR that will result in a path towards improved health. The overarching objective is to build a cadre of geriatrics, gerontology and palliative care researchers, clinicians, and administrators across the US with the necessary skills to harness the power and promise of CBPR in fostering impactful and sustained conduct healthcare system change for older adults. To accomplish this, the applicant proposes the following Specific Aims: (1) Build a national CBPR training program focusing on health improvement in older populations; (2) Measure program outcomes, and (3) Develop a program sustainability plan. The applicant is a senior investigator, program innovator, and leading national expert in designing and executing rigorous, federally-funded, CBPR research to improve care for older adults with serious illness and (b) Training and mentoring healthcare professionals in aging and palliative care research that is visioned, designed, executed, and disseminated in equal, bidirectional partnership with local communities. Her long-term career goal is to make a broad-reaching and sustainable impact on the approach to addressing health gaps in aging and end-of-life research for older adults by establishing a nationally-available CBPR training center for aging research. To achieve these goals, she has designed a training and skills development program that includes a focus on 5 key areas: (1) Curriculum development for adult learners; (2) Institutional Change leadership skills; (3) Mentorship of beginning investigators in healthcare; (4) Implementation science, and (5) Further expertise in aging focused research. The creation of an impactful and sustainable CBPR training program for aging research and clinical professionals promises to change the state of research and implementable solutions to address health gaps among older adults across the US. This academic-community partnership approach promises to overcome barriers in communities, catalyze development of local culturally appropriate interventions, and ultimately change approaches to gaps in aging care for varied populations of older adults across the US.
