Advancing cross-national research on aging and cognitive function: English/Spanish courses with the Mexican Health and Aging Study and HRS/HCAP global partner studies

There are promising prospects to advance global research on ADRD as more data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) family of studies have become available particularly from low-middle-income countries. The research community has identified the need to train more scientists in the use of the existing datasets to study the social, behavioral, cultural, and institutional aspects of cognitive function and trajectories of ADRD over the life course with a cross-national approach. The language of training is a major barrier to building capacity in low-middle-income countries, however, and U.S. investigators need more interaction with investigators to integrate the global context from which the cross-national research data originates and to build rich multinational research collaborations. The proposed project seeks to train scientists at the advanced-doctoral, postdoctoral, and junior investigator level by improving these skills, with a focus on the U.S. and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. We propose a program of five annual courses. Each year new scholars will commit to an integrated course of in-person and online team activities. We have the following Specific Aims: (1) Build additional capacity to conduct research on AD/ADRD and related risk and protective factors with a cross-national approach; (2) Create opportunities for participants to interact with each other and faculty with common research interests using a cross-national perspective. (3) Advance research on cognitive function and dementia (AD/ADRD) using a cross-national approach. Each annual course will include three phases: a) five-day workshop in-person, b) six-month regular online interactions of writing groups that are launched in the workshop, and c) two-day conference in-person to present results. The 5-day in-person workshop will be offered each year alternating in the U.S. (in English) and in Mexico (in Spanish), to maximize participation of scholars from the countries where the data is collected, and foster collaborations between researchers based in the U.S. and abroad. Evaluation will be included at each of the three phases. The program builds upon considerable experience, as the proposed team of bilingual faculty and support staff are proficient conducting research workshops in-person and online and organizing international conferences around the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), one of the HRS/HCAP studies with 20+ years of longitudinal follow-up and international activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. The team has worked in multinational groups developing cross-national research as well. The result will be an expanding group of scholars fluent in the skills needed to formulate and test research hypotheses with cross-national comparisons; trained in the use of the relevant data sources; and active in a lively and productive collaborative global network of scholars working in these topics using the growing network of HRS/HCAP databases and other associated context-specific data sources. Project Number: 5R25AG095799-02 | Fiscal Year: 2026 | NIH Institute/Center: National Institute on Aging (NIA) | Principal Investigator: Rebeca Wong (+2 co-PIs) | Institution: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCIENCE CENTER, SAN ANTONIO, TX | Award Amount: $366,354 | Activity Code: R25 | Study Section: ZAG1-ZIJ-4(M2) View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11416352