USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health: Enhanced Contextual Data Resource (CDR) for Understanding the AD/ADRD Exposome
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PROJECT SUMMARY This is an application for a supplement to the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health (CBPH) (P30AG017265) to create an Enhanced Contextual Data Resource (CDR) for Understanding the AD/ADRD Exposome. The CBPH provides a synergistic research environment that supports activities to enhance understanding of the social and biological processes that contribute to population health and health disparities at older ages. The physical, chemical, and social environmental exposures that constitute the exposome undoubtedly play an important role in shaping health over the life course, but the impact of the exposome on AD/ADRD outcomes is not fully understood. One of the major challenges in research on the AD/ADRD exposome is the lack of readily available and linkable data on environmental exposures. The difficulties inherent to the acquisition, management, and analysis of contextual data represent a formidable barrier for both new and experienced users. These barriers include the high up-front costs of obtaining and processing data so it can be linked to survey respondents over time, intensive time commitments required to create summary and longitudinal measures of environmental context, and lack of training in how to use such data in models of health and aging. This supplement overcomes these barriers by leveraging the Center’s existing expertise in building data resources as well as its infrastructure for data dissemination and user support to create a comprehensive AD/ADRD exposome focused CDR. Through this administrative supplement we will greatly enhance the research infrastructure around exposome data with improved temporal and spatial coverage of data sets and the creation of additional user resources to facilitate use of the data by both established researchers and those who are new to the AD/ADRD field and/or geographic and environmental research. The proposed supplemental activities will also take advantage of newly available data enclaves to provide even more rapid dissemination of this data resource to the community of researchers in aging, and specifically AD/ADRD.
