Flexible Funding as a Promising Strategy to Prevent Homelessness for Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence.

The complex interrelationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization and housing instability has been well established. Being the victim of IPV is a leading cause of homelessness for women, and once someone is homeless, their lives often spiral downward quickly. While some IPV survivors require extensive and possibly long-term assistance to achieve safe and stable housing (especially if they are contending with multiple complex issues), others could avoid homelessness if provided with immediate, individualized, and flexible assistance. For these survivors, whose housing has been otherwise stable but who face homelessness because of a crisis related to IPV, a brief intervention that includes flexible funding can restore a family's equilibrium and prevent the devastating repercussions associated with homelessness. A longitudinal evaluation of a flexible funding program in Washington, D.C., found that this brief, relatively inexpensive intervention may increase housing stability-94% of clients were housed 6 months after funding was received. Implications for both research and practice are discussed.

Maximizing the Potential of Longitudinal Cohorts for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases: A Community Perspective.

Despite a wealth of activity across the globe in the area of longitudinal population cohorts, surprisingly little information is available on the natural biomedical history of a number of age-related neurodegenerative diseases (ND), and the scope for intervention studies based on these cohorts is only just beginning to be explored. The Joint Programming Initiative on Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) recently developed a novel funding mechanism to rapidly mobilize scientists to address these issues from a broad, international community perspective. Ten expert Working Groups, bringing together a diverse range of community members and covering a wide ND landscape [Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, frontotemporal degeneration, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lewy-body and vascular dementia] were formed to discuss and propose potential approaches to better exploiting and coordinating cohort studies. The purpose of this work is to highlight the novel funding process along with a broad overview of the guidelines and recommendations generated by the ten groups, which include investigations into multiple methodologies such as cognition/functional assessment, biomarkers and biobanking, imaging, health and social outcomes, and pre-symptomatic ND. All of these were published in reports that are now publicly available online.