Gerontological Public Health Training Program

This program's objective is to produce public health scientists whose career research goal is to improve the health and quality of life of elderly persons. This training program is a partnership among two colleges at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a strong history of interactive, multidisciplinary research on health issues in older populations: the School of Public Health and the College of Applied Health Sciences. The program will be based primarily in the School of Public Health (SPH) academic divisions of Community Health Sciences, and Epidemiology and in the Center for Research on Health and Aging at the UIC Institute for Health Research and Policy. The proposed program is organized around a Core Faculty known for their research contributions to the health of older people, an Advisory Committee representing the health science colleges, with Geriatrics serving in an advisory role to the program. When fully in place, the program will support 4 doctoral candidates and 4 postdoctoral trainees. Each trainee will be assigned to a primary mentor (and an option for a secondary mentor) who will be responsible for providing each trainee with a demanding and enriching research experience in public health and aging. Strategies for developing the trainee's research skills include an intensive mentoring program with accomplished research faculty in public health gerontology, a comprehensive curriculum designed to promote research skills tailored to the trainee’s research focus, and programmatic research activities promoting scientific presentations, publications and grantsmanship skills. The training program builds upon a strong academic and research program which has achieved considerable success in developing university faculty researchers in public health and aging. The program utilizes the considerable institutional resources at UIC including a distinguished multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary faculty in health and aging, a University Center for Research on Health and Aging that is the focal point for research in gerontological health across the UIC campus, and anethnically and culturally diverse student and faculty body dedicated to addressing a broad array of health and social issues in urban environments.