Penn Becomes Only U.S. University with Two NIA Roybal Research Centers

From Penn LDI:

A new grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) makes Penn the only university in the country to have two NIA Roybal Centers. The center’s initial name states its purpose: “Transformative Residential Palliative Care for Persons with Dementia Through Behavioral Economics and Data Science.” Its grant is for five years.

The principal investigator is Scott Halpern, MD, PhD, a Perelman School professor, Director of Penn’s Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, and a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI).

“This new Roybal Center provides support for research infrastructure and pilot grants and represents a collaboration with Genesis HealthCare, the largest owner of nursing homes in the United States,” Halpern said. “The idea is for Genesis facilities to be our ‘learning labs’ for pilot studies, and in the later years of the grant we plan to also partner with other owners of long-term services and support facilities.”

The National Institute on Aging’s Roybal Centers are designed to create research infrastructures for assembling multidisciplinary teams of scientists to solve practical problems in aging-related areas of health care. Penn’s first such center — the Roybal Center on Behavioral Economics and Health headed by Perelman School Professor and LDI Senior Fellow Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD – was just renewed for the second time.

The new Penn center is one of four Roybal Centers studying dementia but the only one focused on the palliative care of dementia patients. It includes investigators from across Penn as well as from Harvard, Brown University, Florida Atlantic University, Yale, Drexel, the University of Oregon, Mt. Sinai, University of North Carolina, Cornell, Penn State and the University of Indiana.