Center for Aging in Diverse Communities Renewal Announcement

September 2018

UC San Francisco is a pioneering leader in research designed to understand and eliminate health disparities. In support of this ongoing work, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) /National Institute on Aging (NIA) has awarded the UCSF School of Medicine a fifth consecutive five-year P30 grant to fund the UCSF Center for Aging in Diverse Communities (CADC). The CADC is part of a nationwide network of research centers, the Resource Centers on Minority Aging Research (RCMAR), aimed at reducing health disparities within our aging population. CADC is one of two RCMAR centers that have been continuously funded since NIA launched RCMAR 21 years ago, in 1997.

Leah Karliner, MD, MAS, in the Division of General Internal Medicine, directs CADC. Its research focuses on understanding health disparities and building community-engaged interventions to eliminate those disparities among older adults. The Center’s most important mission is to fund, train, and mentor talented, underrepresented junior investigators to develop independent research careers focused on health disparities and aging issues. To date, CADC has been instrumental in the career development of more than 80 underrepresented minority early-career investigators who subsequently have made significant contributions to minority aging research. During the most recent 5-year funding cycle, CADC supported 25 junior investigators who produced 167 peer-reviewed articles, and received a total of 44 new grants, 14 of which span the NIH. Recent scholars have done impactful aging research ranging from the first known biomarker study in Latinas with breast cancer, to dementia health disparities among diverse racial-ethnic groups, to mental health and dementia among older sexual gender minorities.

For the first year of the new funding cycle, CADC will fund pilot studies for three new scholars, UCSF Assistant Professor Dr. Maria Garcia and Fellow Dr. Samuel Washington, and Assistant Professor formerly at UCSF and now at Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Liliana Ramirez-Gomez.

During the upcoming five-year cycle, Dr. Leah Karliner, in collaboration with CADC faculty Drs. Steven Gregorich, Julene Johnson, Celia Kaplan, Tung Nguyen, and Anita Stewart, will continue the CADC mission of aging health disparities research and mentorship, as well as build upon and strengthen relationships within UCSF and with community aging organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

To keep up with the latest news and accomplishments from CADC please visit cadc.ucsf.edu