National Institute on Aging's 50th anniversary: Advancing aging research and the health and well-being of older adults.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was founded in 1974 to support and conduct research on aging and the health and well-being of older adults. Fifty years ago, the concept of studying aging generated much skepticism. Early NIA-funded research findings helped establish the great value of aging research and provided the foundation for significant science advances that have improved our understanding of the aging process, diseases and conditions associated with aging, and the effects of health inequities, as well as the need to promote healthy aging lifestyles. Today, we celebrate the many important contributions to aging research made possible by NIA, as well as opportunities to continue to make meaningful progress. NIA emphasizes that the broad aging research community must continue to increase and expand our collective efforts to recruit and train a diverse next generation of aging researchers.

Aging Research: Collaborations Forge a Promising Future.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of 27 institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was founded in 1974 to conduct and support research on aging and the health and well-being of older people. The Institute's interests span the fundamental processes that contribute to aging and their impact on systems; diseases and conditions for which aging is a risk factor; and interventions that may prevent, delay, or treat these conditions or otherwise contribute to an extension of healthy, active years of life. Multiple fruitful research collaborations within and outside the federal government, spanning the breadth of the Institute's research activities, have marked NIA's growth over the past 40 years, as well as its current areas of ongoing research. This article discusses several highlights of these collaborations, including the Health and Retirement Study, geroscience research, falls injury prevention in elderly adults, and implementation of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease, from the perspective of past accomplishments and trends for the future.

The Healthy Communities Study: Its Rationale, Aims, and Approach.

Communities across the U.S. are implementing programs and policies designed to address the epidemic of childhood obesity. These programs vary widely in their approaches, including the intensity level, duration, funding, target population, and implementation techniques. However, no previous studies have examined these variations and determined how such aspects of community programs and policies are related to childhood obesity outcomes. The Healthy Communities Study is an observational study that is assessing the associations between characteristics of community programs and policies and BMI, nutrition, and physical activity in children. The Healthy Communities Study was funded in 2010, field data collection and medical record abstraction will be completed in 2015, and data cleaning and analyses will be completed by mid-year 2016. One-hundred and thirty communities (defined as a high school catchment area) and approximately 5,000 children in kindergarten through eighth grade and their parents have been recruited from public elementary and middle schools across the country. The study is examining quantitative and qualitative information obtained from community-based initiatives; measures of community characteristics (e.g., school environment); and child and parent measures, including children's physical activity levels and dietary practices and children's and parents' BMI. The Healthy Communities Study employs a complex study design that includes a diverse sample of communities across the country and combines current/cross-sectional and retrospective data (abstracted from children's medical records). This paper describes the rationale for the Healthy Communities Study, the study aims and logic model, and a brief overview of the study design.

Operational Implementation of the Healthy Communities Study: How Communities Shape Children's Health.

The Healthy Communities Study (HCS) is examining how characteristics of community programs and policies targeting childhood obesity are related to childhood diet, physical activity, and obesity outcomes. The study involves selected districts and public schools in 130 communities; families recruited through schools; and data collected at the community, school, household, and child levels. Data collection took place in two waves-Wave 1 in Spring 2012 and Wave 2 from 2013 to 2015-with analysis to be completed by August 2016. This paper describes operational elements of the HCS, including recruitment activities, field operations, training of data collectors, human subjects protection, and quality assurance and quality control procedures. Experienced trainers oversaw and conducted all training, including training of (1) district and school recruitment staff; (2) telephone interviewers for household screening and recruitment; (3) field data collectors for conducting household data collection; and (4) community liaisons for conducting key informant interviews, document abstraction, and community observations. The study team developed quality assurance and quality control procedures that were implemented for all aspects of the study. Planning and operationalizing a study of this complexity and magnitude, with multiple functional teams, required frequent communication and strong collaboration among all study partners to ensure timely and effective decision making.

Measuring Community Programs and Policies in the Healthy Communities Study.

Childhood obesity is a challenging public health issue facing communities throughout the U.S. Local efforts are believed to be essential to assuring environments that support physical activity and healthy food/beverage consumption among children and their families. However, little is known about how broadly and intensively communities are implementing combinations of programs and policies that address childhood nutrition, physical activity, and weight control. The Healthy Communities Study is a nationwide scientific study in diverse communities to identify characteristics of communities and programs that may be associated with childhood obesity. Data collection occurred in 2013-2015; data analysis will be completed in 2016. As part of the Healthy Communities Study, researchers designed a measurement system to assess the number and scope of community programs and policies and to examine possible associations between calculated "intensity" scores for these programs and policies and behavioral and outcome measures related to healthy weight among children. This report describes the protocol used to capture and code instances of community programs and policies, to characterize attributes of community programs and policies related to study hypotheses, and to calculate the intensity of combinations of community programs and policies (i.e., using the attributes of change strategy, duration, and reach).

Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment Research (COPTR): interventions addressing multiple influences in childhood and adolescent obesity.

This paper is the first of five papers in this issue that describes a new research consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health. It describes the design characteristics of the Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment Research (COPTR) trials and common measurements across the trials. The COPTR Consortium is conducting interventions to prevent obesity in pre-schoolers and treat overweight or obese 7-13 year olds. Four randomized controlled trials will enroll a total of 1700 children and adolescents (~50% female, 70% minorities), and will test innovative multi-level and multi-component interventions in multiple settings involving primary care physicians, parks and recreational centers, family advocates, and schools. For all the studies, the primary outcome measure is body mass index; secondary outcomes, moderators and mediators of intervention include diet, physical activity, home and neighborhood influences, and psychosocial factors. COPTR is being conducted collaboratively among four participating field centers, a coordinating center, and NIH project offices. Outcomes from COPTR have the potential to enhance our knowledge of interventions to prevent and treat childhood obesity.