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