Center for Improving Care Delivery for the Aging (CICADA)

Receiving high-quality, accessible, affordable, and well-coordinated health care is fundamental to the health, wellbeing, function, and independence of older adults, but the current U.S. health care system is not organized to uniformly provide this care. Services are often inaccessible or unaffordable, with persistent barriers to access. There is a critical need to grow and support a well-trained scientific workforce to address these shortcomings and disseminate findings effectively. The Center for Improving Care Delivery for the Aging (CICADA), a Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), is dedicated to these objectives. In its first funding period, CICADA succeeded in developing a robust learning and longitudinal mentoring environment for 15 RCMAR Scientists. Our focus has been on health services research (HSR), an interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the most effective ways to organize, manage, finance, and deliver high-quality care; reduce medical errors; and improve health and wellbeing. HSR spans the investigation and discovery of gaps in evidence-based care delivery, the development of evidence-based interventions to address those gaps, and the study of factors that influence and promote the uptake and sustainment of evidence-based treatments into routine practice via implementation science. Taken together, HSR approaches strive to ensure that all aging adults receive high-quality, equitable, evidence-supported health care and maintain or improve their health and wellbeing as they age. HSR is particularly in need of concerted efforts to increase its workforce. Workforce shortages have scientific and clinical costs, as having too few aging-focused HSR researchers limits our ability to understand and address ways to improve health and health care for older adults. Developing research leaders who can address the challenges facing aging populations is an absolute priority. Based in Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI), a cooperative venture that spans all 12 schools and centers at Penn, CICADA has offered exceptional training in quantitative and econometric methods and supported the next generation of researchers and mentors. In recognition of ongoing needs in the field, our renewal application seeks to continue and build upon these activities. The overall Specific Aims for CICADA are: (1) To increase and enhance the aging-focused research workforce by mentoring promising scientists for careers dedicated to improving health care delivery for older adults; and (2) To develop and sustain infrastructure to promote science that improves the health, wellbeing, function, and independence of older adults through transformation in health care delivery, with the goal of achieving health for all.