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The Interdisciplinary Center on Aging at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) brings together health care providers, researchers and educators who are focused on the needs of the rapidly growing older adult population. This Center includes 78 faculty members (Center Fellows) representing six schools, five colleges, and 24 different departments at the University of Missouri. The proposed RAND/Hartford Interdisciplinary Geriatric Health Care Research Center will promote interdisciplinary research with a special focus on development of innovative clinical and health services interventions for older adults. We will accomplish this goal by creating an interdisciplinary steering committee of senior faculty members, a monthly research seminar featuring speakers from 34 existing interdisciplinary research teams, interdisciplinary courses focusing on research on physical and cognitive function in aging, a small grants program to promote interdisciplinary scholarship and dissemination, and support of three pilot projects with high prospects of external funding addressing quality of life and quality of care. Represented among our participating center fellows are 18 NIH-funded researchers and 9 scholars who have funding from the Hartford Foundation. Junior faculty and senior faculty mentors work side-by-side on 34 interdisciplinary research teams representing 39 different disciplines. The RAND/Hartford Geriatric Research Center at the University of Missouri will focus resources on developing junior faculty in concert with senior mentors addressing clinical interventions. Faculty members from the three core disciplines (medicine, nursing, and social work) have a strong track record of collaborative research. Architectural studies, engineering, and physical therapy are added to create our nucleus of six key disciplines, while 33 other disciplines will join these in developing interdisciplinary research and research training.
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