This research theme examines the precursors of cognitive decline and the effects of cognitive decline, including ADRD, on patients, caregivers, and health care systems, both domestically and around the globe. This research Chat will bring together scholars from Institute on Aging, the Penn Memory Center, Penn’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center, the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, and PARC to promote integration and cross-collaborations on one of the most vexing challenges in preparing for an aging society: preventing ADRDs, and coping with their consequences at the individual and societal level. Register here.
This research theme includes the analyses of socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, nativity, geographic, and gender inequalities in health and mortality, including period/cohort risks and their underlying social/biological causes. One of the original PARC research themes, it incorporates socioeconomic inequalities, racial/ethnic and gender differences, and variation in health outcomes by nativity and place of residence, including period and cohort risks and their underlying social and biological mechanisms. This topic is receiving unprecedented, and long-overdue, attention in both the scholarly and popular press. The goal of this Chat is to learn from each other, promote cross-collaboration and discussions, and work towards solutions. Register here.
This research theme focuses on studies of sociocultural, economic, and environmental circumstances impacting the well-being of older individuals around the world, and analyses of physical, mental and cognitive aging trajectories in diverse and understudied populations across a wide spectrum of socioeconomic development. This Chat will highlight PARC’s international networks and connections, feature some of PARC’s signature global aging projects and collaborators, encourage discussions how aging and aging-trajectories in low- and middle income differ from the more frequently studied patterns in high-income contexts, and explore how PARC can leverage its global connections to make distinctive contributions to the field of global aging research. Register here.
This research theme includes the exploration of early developmental circumstances that may be crucial for shaping how we age, including nutrition, infectious disease, social support, education, and gene-environment interactions prenatally and during childhood. This theme is firmly rooted in understanding aging as a process that begins at conception, rather than being a discrete stage marked by having reached a specific biological age. PARC associates pursue research on the early-life determinants of mortality and health in diverse domestic and international contexts. This Chat will focus on how PARC can facilitate the use of exceptional cohort and/or multigenerational data for these research questions, stimulate comparative research on the early-life determinants of aging, facilitate collaborations between PARC associates and across affiliated centers to enhance the understanding of life-course determinants of aging and possible policy-responses that can help reduce health inequalities stemming from early-life adversities that predominantly affect some subsets of populations. Register here.