The Leadership and Administrative Core is housed in the offices of the Chairman of the Mount Sinai Department of Geriatrics.

Co-led by William Hung, MD and Barbara Vickrey, MD, MPH, the OAIC’s Research Education Component (REC) at the Icahn School of Medicine reinforces junior faculty’s interest in improving the care of seriously ill, older adults with educational activities and training experiences while promoting the development of future research leaders.

The REC’s specific objectives are to:

• Recruit talented faculty from different disciplines who are committed to academic careers improving the care of older adults with serious illness
• Provide advanced training in research methodologies needed to conduct high quality, ethical, and multidisciplinary palliative care research for seriously ill older adults
• Provide multidisciplinary mentorship and individually tailored career development plans
• Support trainees in conducting and disseminating research studies to assess questions related to the health and independence of older adults or related palliative care issues
• Facilitate attainment of academic and life skills to sustain long-term success as independent investigators and future leaders in geriatric and palliative care medicine

Prepare and assist trainees in obtaining external funding to continue an academic research career.

There is a call for new REC pilots annually. If you are interested, please reach out to Deborah.Watman@mssm,edu.

The Population Research and Methods Core (RC-PRM) contributes to the goals of the OAIC by providing statistical, methodological, and programming expertise, as well as mentoring in those areas, to investigators in the School’s OAIC. Headed by Melissa Aldridge, PhD and Lihua Li, PhD, this core has been highly productive in providing consultations and support for numerous OAIC investigators confronted with methodological and analytic issues that occur in the study of older adults with serious illness. Our Core’s consultants have a broad range of knowledge regarding research methods to serve as potential consults to OAIC investigators. Resources and expertise provided in a variety of ways and throughout all phases of the research process—from design to interpretation and presentation of findings to:

• To provide sophisticated, cutting edge methodological, statistical, and programming support to OAIC investigators.
• To apply advanced research and statistical methodology (e.g., propensity scores, instrumental variable estimation, competing risk analysis) used in other fields but not commonly applied to aging-related research.
• To collaborate closely with the RCDC and RCDSC to ensure that junior faculty obtain research methods training to advance their current knowledge and expertise.
• To develop the infrastructure for population based research by hiring and training data analysts who will conduct data management and programming functions and provide statistical expertise in cutting edge research methods.

One to two times per year, we will announce a Request for Proposals, which will fund investigators performing pilot/exploratory studies in population based geriatric/palliative care research. Check back here for updates. View the most recent RFP for reference.

This core proves faculty-level biostatistician consultations and support for investigators confronted with methodological and analytic issues that occur in the study of older adults with serious illness. Request a biostatistician consultation by filling out the below form.

Patients and family members often feel strained when asked to assess and quantify symptoms, physical impairment, satisfaction, and caregiver burden in questionnaires, impeding research. The major goal of the Measurement, Methods and Analysis Core (RC-MMA), led by Jeanne Teresi, EdD, PhD and Mildred Ramirez, PhD, is to address such measurement challenges using item banking and the methods of modern psychometric theory through the following specific aims:

• To assist OAIC investigators (from this and other centers) in evaluating measures, and, where appropriate, in the selection, use, and construction of item response theory (IRT)-derived measures from existing sources (e.g., the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System [PROMIS] Roadmap Initiative)
• To apply psychometric techniques to items from existing palliative care and related data sets to test model assumptions, examine distributions, and prepare data for analyses
• To conduct IRT analyses using data from ongoing NIH-funded palliative care research with the goal of constructing a palliative care item bank as part of a later developmental project in years 3-5 of this OAIC
• To provide data management, in coordination with RC-RDA, for studies supported by the other OAIC cores
• To disseminate this information to researchers interested in geriatric palliative care through presentations and publications, the National Palliative Care Research Center and other major national initiatives, and the development of a website with links to PROMIS and related website

The goal of the Population Data Use and Management (RC-PDM) Core is to leverage existing national survey, administrative and health system data to support OAIC research on geriatric palliative care.RC-PDM was launched in 2020 and is led by Claire Ankuda, MD, MPH and Carolyn Zhu, PhD. The core provides data management and operational support to OAIC investigators working with existing data sources, including the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), the Medicare Current Beneficiary Study (MCBS), and publicly available geographic data.

To request support from RC-PDM, please complete this form.