PRAISE: Promoting Rural Aging Innovations, Science, and Education

About This Grant

The goal of the PRAISE: Promoting Rural Aging Innovations, Science, and Education T32 application is to fund an innovative research training program at Dartmouth to prepare scholars for careers dedicated to advancing whole person care for rural older adults with multiple chronic conditions using multi-level policy evaluation and clinical intervention research. Whole person health for aging adults is about treating patients as individuals with unique needs, goals, and circumstances, rather than focusing on isolated health issues. It’s a comprehensive, holistic approach that seeks to optimize well-being in all areas of life. This training program will focus on the intersection between aging and rural health and innovative solutions to the distinct challenges it poses to the provision of whole person health, using the social ecological model as the framework for multi-level policy evaluation and clinical intervention research. We will select 2 predoctoral scholars per year in Y1-4 from two doctoral programs: health policy and clinical practice and quantitative biomedical sciences and 1 postdoctoral scholar in Y2-4 from geriatrics or palliative care. Scholars will receive comprehensive multidisciplinary training that integrates relevant theories, methodological strategies, and evidence from clinical medicine (i.e., geriatrics, palliative care), social science (i.e., behavioral decision science, social psychology, economics, public health policy), and clinical research (i.e., epidemiology, biostatistics, implementation science). Scholars will learn methods for rigorous design and testing of interventions intended to align care plans with individual patient’s goals and care preferences, promote age-friendly practices in all care settings, and integrate social services and caregiver support into healthcare delivery. They will receive in-depth training in clinical trial methods, ranging from early-phase formative and feasibility trials through pragmatic efficacy studies, including effectiveness-implementation hybrid designs and quasi-experimental policy analysis. To build this program we will focus on recruiting and retaining outstanding trainees, supporting their training through rigorous coursework and mentored research guided by an interdisciplinary mentoring team and individualized research career development plans. The training program will be housed in the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine and will leverage the expertise of faculty associated with The Dartmouth Institute and/or one or more of the ten centers across Dartmouth and Dartmouth Health with resources for promoting rural aging innovations, science and education (C. Everett Koop Institute, Center for Advancing Rural Health, Geriatric Center of Excellence, Center for Rural Health Care Delivery Science, Center for Precision Health and Artificial Intelligence, Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, Center for Implementation Science, Northern New England System Transformation for Primary Care, Promise Partnership and Learning Health System Embedded Scientist Training and Research Center, and the SYNERGY Clinical and Translational Science Award).