NIA funds multi-university aging and policy center

A consortium of three Upstate New York universities has received a 5-year, $1.5-million grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to fund the Center for Aging and Policy Studies (CAPS), headquartered at Syracuse University. The NIA, part of the National Institutes of Health, issues such grants to support centers of innovative research on the demography and economics of aging.

“We are delighted to receive this NIA grant, as it recognizes CAPS as one of the leading research centers on the demography and economics of aging in the country,” says Jennifer Karas Montez, who serves as director of the Center and PI for the grant. Montez, a sociologist, is Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies in the Maxwell School and a faculty associate in Syracuse University’s Aging Studies Institute (ASI). “The cross-site consortium provides exciting opportunities for new collaborations that can improve the health and independence of older adults.” 

The CAPS consortium includes Syracuse, Cornell University, and the University at Albany.  In addition to Montez, the CAPS cross-site leadership team includes, also at Syracuse, Janet Wilmoth, sociologist and director of ASI, and Douglas Wolf, demographer and Gerald B. Cramer Professor of Aging Studies. The leadership team is completed by Kelly Musick, demographer and chair of Policy Analysis and Management in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell, and Benjamin Shaw, associate dean for research at the School of Public Health at UAlbany. 

The overarching goal of CAPS is to improve the health, well-being, and independence of older adults by addressing issues facing middle-age and older adults and the families that care for them. In its first year, the center will bring together 39 scholars from across the three sites whose research focuses on the demography and economics of aging, organized by the themes of (A) health and well-being and (B) family and intergenerational supports. It will fund innovative pilot projects and will offer a colloquia series, visiting scholars program, grant mentoring program, state-of-the-art methods training, and a research incubator to foster collaborations among CAPS affiliates. 

This is the third time that CAPS has received funding from the NIA. Previous grants were awarded in 1994-99 and 2009-14 when CAPS was a single institution center at Syracuse.

For more information, visit this ASI webpage.

07/17/20