The Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), one of 15 Centers around the country, builds upon the pioneering research in aging and palliative care conducted at Mount Sinai over the past 15 years. As the home of the first academic Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine in the United States, ISMMS is extremely committed to Geriatrics and the success of our OAIC. We aim to stimulate, develop, and fund research directed at improving quality of life and independence for older adults with serious illness and their caregivers. In our first five years, we became a national resource for research training in geriatric palliative care, as well as a key contributor in the movement to improve quality of care for our nation’s sickest patients. Our specific aims are to:

• Expand a comprehensive transdisciplinary research program focused on improving quality of life, independence, and function; and develop and test models of improving care for older adults living with serious illness
• Identify, recruit, and train leaders in aging and palliative care research through mentoring relationships with successful investigators; strengthen and expand ISMMS’ existing research training programs in aging and palliative care; and provide support for pilot projects, statistical and analytic consultation, and instrument development and measurement
• Expand a research infrastructure that will support new and ongoing research in the care of seriously ill older adults by providing expertise in research design, measurement, and analysis by developing and applying innovative research designs, analytic techniques, and measures; apply research methods not currently in widespread use (e.g. item response theory, propensity score methods), but which are highly applicable to geriatrics and gerontology because of the populations studied         
• Develop a research center that bridges the transdisciplinary specialties of geriatrics and palliative care that will serve as a model for research that has not been well addressed by these two specialties

The overall goal of our center is to bring together a diverse, transdisciplinary group of distinguished investigators with a strong history of collaboration and research in pain and other symptoms, functional outcomes, patient-oriented research, research design, biostatistics, and measurement to establish an OAIC focused on palliative care in older adults.