Core B. Program Development (Pilot) Core

University Of Michigan At Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

REVISED PROJECT ABSTRACT [Program Development (Pilot) Core] The Program Development (Pilot) Core will support CAPRA’s overall goal of serving as a national resource to promote and accelerate multidisciplinary research that informs the actions that governments, and healthcare systems can take to reduce the social, economic, and health burden of AD/ADRD. The Pilot Core will play a central role in achieving that goal by funding innovative emerging scholars, mentoring those scholars, and helping them submit full grant applications to NIA. Pilot projects provide opportunities to test promising hypotheses, stimulate investigator collaborations, and generate preliminary data for larger externally supported studies. To reduce barriers to entry for AD/ADRD population and healthcare research, the Pilot Core is designed to provide not only funding for pilots but also access to expertise, methods, and mentorship to ensure success. The objective of the CAPRA Pilot Core is to select and support innovative small-scale projects in AD/ADRD healthcare delivery, economics, and public policy, that will provide the preliminary data leading to larger externally supported projects on topics related to CAPRA’s themes. Our mentorship program will provide a curriculum on understanding the current clinical and social aspects of AD/ADRD needed to do cutting-edge research, use of best practices for reproducible research, and address how studies, regardless of topic, are influenced by differences in disease risk, care access, and outcomes within and across populations. We aim to solicit pilot studies from emerging scholars across many disciplines and career stages not only from the University of Michigan (UM) but also nationally to share the extensive UM resources with institutions with less research infrastructure or AD/ADRD experience. In addition to funding Emerging Scholars, we will also support a small number of Innovation Pilots that develop new methods or collect primary data that can benefit the AD/ADRD research community at large. CAPRA will not merely fund promising pilot projects; the pilot investigators will become an integral part of CAPRA. In addition to financial support, the Pilot Core will provide a two-year mentorship program to help awardees transition into AD/ADRD research and submit R-series or K-series applications to NIA. Investigators will receive technical support, access to research resources, seminars, and mentorship to move their pilot to successful completion. They will also participate in CAPRA external network activities, creating a wider network of AD/ADRD research collaborators and receive ongoing mentoring through the process of writing larger-scale grant proposals. We will leverage experience across all CAPRA collaborators and the Communication Core to enhance the science and potential influence of pilot investigator research. Ultimately our goal is to bring talented researchers from many disciplines into AD/ADRD research and seek innovative collaborative solutions.