The National Institute on Aging Health Disparities Research Framework

Abstract

Objective: Development of a new framework for the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to assess progress and opportunities toward stimulating and supporting rigorous research to address health disparities. Design: Portfolio review of NIA’s health disparities research portfolio to evaluate NIA’s progress in addressing priority health disparities areas. Results: The NIA Health DisparitiesResearch Framework highlights important factors for health disparities research related to aging, provides an organizing structure for tracking progress, stimulates opportunities to better delineate causal pathways and broadens the scope for malleable targets for intervention, aiding in our efforts to address health disparities in the aging population. Conclusions: The promise of health disparitiesresearch depends largely on scientific rigor that builds on past findings and aggressively pursues new approaches. The NIA Health Disparities Framework provides a landscape for stimulating interdisciplinary approaches, evaluating research productivity and identifying opportunities for innovative health disparities research related to aging. Ethn Dis. 2015;25(3):245-254.