Overview
Past and Current Projects
Available Resources
Key Personnel
Since the creation of the Biostatistics Core five years ago, we have made outstanding advances in research and training to further frailty science and prevention at our institution. The Core has: 1) Twenty-four papers, more than 80 presentations, and 8 grant awards and applications have resulted by 2008. Additionally, we have attracted to research on frailty and aging promising junior researchers in the Department of Biostatistics, assembling a critical mass of quantitative expertise that was previously lacking and would not otherwise exist. 2) Substantially improved the database infrastructure available to research on frailty and aging at our institution. Improvements include: a database-driven internet application for managing and disseminating data overseen by our OAIC; a system to develop databases supporting data collection in investigators’ studies; data housing technologies with query capability incorporating real-time updating; and the OAIC website. Also underway, and on schedule, is the creation of a study consortium whereby investigators may readily conduct joint analyses of multiple cohorts. Such analyses may be most valuable for investigating molecular hypotheses, which often require large samples, and then cross-validating them. 3) Developed and supported new methodologies that have furthered the conceptualization of frailty, advanced its ascertainment, and laid crucial groundwork for testing theories positing a “physiotype” of multi-systemic dysregulation underlying the clinical frailty presentation. By advancing the validation of the outcome on whose study this OAIC is focused, this work was central to the mission of this OAIC. Additional methodological work has heightened accuracy of findings in studies subject to participant dropout and data incompleteness—problems that are inevitable in the study of frail older adults. Finally, we are directing current work toward methods to validly accomplish joint analysis of multiple cohorts. 4) By 2008, mentored 12 junior investigator supported by this OAIC: in conducting their research and in quantitative methods they must master to become independent, leading researchers on frailty. Much mentoring has been one-on-one. As such it has been designed to complement the superb quantitative education and intellectual enrichment opportunities already available at our institution, prominently including courses provided by the JHBSPH; and the bi-weekly Research-in-Progress sessions of the COAH-sponsored Epidemiology and Biostatistics of Aging Training Program. We have also provided retreats, methods symposia, and educational materials that would not be possible absent this OAIC. 5) Led in the mission of our OAIC, frailty research, and the OAIC program, through central participation with our Leadership and Administrative Core. We have successfully created an OAIC website and equipped it with tools supporting submission of research proposals, data collection, and data information sharing. We have also provided expertise enriching the broader OAIC and gerontological community. In support of the OAIC community, Dr. Bandeen-Roche has (1) served in NIH review of OAIC applications; (2) participated in the 2006 University of Michigan OAIC-sponsored Retreat for junior investigators; (3) invited members of the Yale OAIC Biostatistics Core to engage in information exchange at COAH and present a seminar in the Johns Hopkins Department of Biostatistics; (4) collaborated with members of the Yale OAIC Biostatistics Core in a gerontological statistics symposium to be presented at the 2007 Joint Statistical Meetings; and (5) been appointed to the External Advisory Committee of the Duke OAIC. Dr. Xue has provided external RCDC proposal review for the University of Pittsburgh OAIC. In the broader gerontological community: Dr. Bandeen-Roche has established an active collaboration with the FR Data Consortium on the study of frailty, based at McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada. A paper is in progress from that collaboration. These interchanges have enriched our knowledge base for the investigation of frailty and for most effectively leading this Center. In all, this Core has been central in the laying of groundwork, by this OAIC, for the next generation research to delineate the multi-systemic etiology of frailty, and develop and evaluate interventions specifically targeting such. | 
