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Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development
Resources and Environment
The Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development is an all-university Center, serving as a resource for the entire Duke University and Medical Center community, with 126 faculty members from a broad spectrum of departments, designated as Senior Fellows. The Offices of the Director and some of the most closely associated faculty and staff are located in the Busse Building of the Medical Center, adjacent to the main university campus. The Aging Center provides a computing and statistical laboratory which permits easy access to large data bases and statistical analysis software packages. Both faculty and trainees can also access this facility through personal and laptop computers throughout the building or via modem or DSL facilities from other campus locations or at home. Statistical support to aid investigators and trainees in planning studies, analyzing data and learning how to use statistical software packages is also available in the computing laboratory. This expert statistical assistance is freely available and given in a one-on-one tutorial basis so that trainees and faculty can learn to develop the most appropriate study designs and use the most effective data analysis programs available. On the same floor is a social science data archive with multiple resources and local help for interpretation and recoding problems with these data sets if this should be necessary. The Aging Center maintains a subject registry as well to aid investigators in finding appropriate human subjects for their research and to ensure that investigators keep within the appropriate guidelines for human subject research.
Geriatric Medicine at Duke has been a major strength of the Aging Center since 1984 with the creation of the Geriatric Division in the Department of Medicine. The Division of Geriatrics has distinguished itself as a leader in clinical care, research, and education. This sustained success is due in large part to its visionary leadership and abundant resources, including grants such as the Claude D. Pepper OAIC and Hartford Center of Excellence. The VA medical center also hosts a Geriatrics Research, Education, and Clinical Center. The Medicine/Dentistry Postgraduate Training Grant from the Department of Health and Human Services supports the fellowship program. These resources provide critical support and stability that allow our division to continue to provide excellent training for fellows and junior faculty. The Division has committed itself to placing its best trainees in leadership positions around the nation. We count numerous division chiefs and program directors among our former fellows and junior faculty.
On a broader scale, a number of programs operating in the Aging Center and/or in the University at large assist Center investigators in the mission of the Center.
The Behavior and Physiology in Aging - Research Training Program, funded by NIH for the past 32 years, supports postdoctoral fellows with career interests in aging. Fellows train in Duke research programs in which aging research is ongoing. Current fellows' areas of interest include medical anthropology, exercise physiology, psychology, and nursing. All fellows attend weekly seminars in the biomedical, social, and psychological aspects of aging as well as in professional development. An important component of the seminar is the annual research ethics module.
The Duke Hartford Foundation Center of Excellence, supported by the Hartford Foundation, concentrated on "early recruitment to academic geriatrics" and focused on providing research opportunities for Duke medical students in geriatrics from 1988 - 1994. During 1997 - 2006, our Center of Excellence concentrated on a critical period in the development of academic faculty: the transition from clinical fellowship to junior faculty and subsequent development towards an independent career as clinician-investigators and clinician-educators. The current Center of Excellence, 2006 - 2011, focuses on developing academic geriatrics faculty whose research, teaching, and clinical care will lead national efforts to meet the health care needs of our older citizens.
In 1992, the Aging Center was first designated as a Claude D. Pepper Older American Independence Center (OAIC) with funding by NIA, and a focus on understanding and treating dysmobility associated with aging. A second Pepper Center grant, awarded in 1999, included cores that provided service to other funded research projects, as well as to Pepper-specific projects. A third Pepper Center grant, awarded in 2006, is exploring approaches to understanding and modifying multiple pathways of functional decline through research and faculty development. In collaboration with various Duke departments, divisions, and centers, the OAIC supports mentored research of junior faculty; pilot research projects; an analysis core; a biological studies core; and developmental projects in biomarkers, metabolomics, and database development.
The Duke Family Support Program, in collaboration with the N.C. Alzheimer's Association and funding from the NC Division of Aging and Adult Services, provides the following free services to all North Carolina residents: confidential, personalized tips on caring for people with memory disorders; a comprehensive information packet on Alzheimer's disease and a Caregiver newsletter delivered twice a year; telephone help with care decisions, evaluating assisted living or nursing facility care and coping strategies; and help selecting support groups, education programs, websites or books.
The Cognitive Psychology Lab focuses on the changes in perception, attention, and memory associated with human aging. The work is concerned primarily with the age-related changes that occur in the absence of significant health problems. Ongoing research projects use reaction time measures to define specific forms of age-related cognitive change, and neuroimaging measures including fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to characterize the associated changes in the brain.
HRSA has supported for a number of years the Geriatric Training Program for Physicians, Dentists, and Behavioral and Mental Health Professions grant. The grant supports fellowship and other training efforts that assist physicians, dentists, and behavioral and mental health professions who teach or plan to teach geriatric medicine, geriatric dentistry, or geriatric behavioral and mental health.
The Donald W. Reynolds Geriatric Training Grant provides support to strengthen faculty expertise in geriatrics at Duke and across the nation by providing structured education in clinical teaching and faculty development as clinician educators. This program offers mini-fellowships in medical student education, long-term care, palliative care, subspecialty medicine and evidence-based medicine.
The Geriatric Education Center grant, supported by HRSA, provides funding to convene an interdisciplinary group of faculty to develop and deliver a curriculum on the care of older adults in transitions of care to be offered to health professions students from a variety of disciplines, including medicine, nursing, PA's, NP's and pharmacists. The grant also supports the dissemination of this curriculum and its products to community-based sites across the state.
The Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health, in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Aging, has received two awards from the John Templeton Foundation to: 1) solicit, award and coordinate seven research projects which would investigate how religion/spirituality influences individual and community health, and 2) form and maintain a community of scholars, build network of senior and junior researchers in spirituality, theology and health.
In addition, a large program project in Alzheimer's disease supports a number of neuroscience and genetic investigations into the basic biology involved in this disease. This program project works in conjunction with the Duke Memory Disorders Clinic which identifies patients that have been thoroughly worked up as potential human subjects for scientists who are studying dementia. Another center, the Behavioral Medicine Research Center, was first funded in 1985, and continues to expand its role. Several of the major projects in that center are focused on aging effects on health and thus bring those investigators to interact with the programs in the Aging Center.
(July, 2008)
