PIKO Administrative Supplements

2024 – 2025

Role of Social CONNECTion in Cognitive Decline in Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Populations (CONNECT)

Project Summary:  Cognitive decline in aging, a form of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, can significantly impact quality of life and independence. The mission of the Pacific Innovations, Knowledge, and Opportunities (PIKO, Grant #: U54GM138062) is to foster the development and implementation of innovative, evidence-based clinical and translational research (CTR) aimed at improving the health of underserved populations. Aligned with PIKO’s mission, the overarching goal of this proposed study is to better understand the complex relationships between social connection and age-related cognitive decline in socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. We will also explore the intersectionality of social connection and demographic factors during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, in relation to cognitive decline in aging. The Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative survey that tracks Americans aged 50 and above, provides longitudinal information on cognitive function, social determinants of health, and multiple dimensions of social connection, including social isolation, social participation, social support, and financial transfers to and from family. Our analytic sample will include more than 4,000 HRS respondents aged 50 and above who have normal cognition at baseline. Dynamic structural equation modeling will be used to estimate the influence of social connection, measured with latent variables, on cognitive decline. Interaction terms will provide estimates of how demographic factors and the COVID-19 pandemic moderate the relationship between social connection and cognitive decline. Initially, socioeconomically disadvantaged will be defined as having less than a high school education (38% of HRS respondents). Sensitivity analyses will explore the impact of alternative definitions of socioeconomically disadvantaged, incorporating household income, wealth, and health insurance, on our results. Our interdisciplinary research team, led by an experienced Principal Investigator with the addition of three new investigators, possesses the necessary expertise to successfully accomplish this project. The Specific Aims are: (1) Investigate the mechanisms by which multiple domains of social connection affect cognitive decline in aging for socioeconomically disadvantaged populations using dynamic structural equation modeling and 2004-2019 HRS data (n≥4,000); (2) Determine the mechanisms by which demographic factors (age, sex, race) and the COVID-19 pandemic moderate the relationship between social connection and cognitive decline among socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals using 2004-2022 HRS data. Achieving these aims will stimulate activity leading to progress in ADRD research by engaging new investigators and guiding future grant proposals focused on testing interventions to improve social connection to reduce cognitive decline in socioeconomically disadvantaged aging populations.

2023 – 2025

Strengthening Data Science Capacity for Biomedical Research Advancement at Hawaii

Project Summary (NOT-OD-23-123): There is no doubt that biomedical science has become a data-intensive field. Over the last decade, we have witnessed the booming of new biomedical technologies that generate massive volumes of biodata. This massive amount of data includes various types of omics-data, Electronic Health Record (EHR) data, petabytes of imaging, and more. With advancements in data science, it is now feasible to access and mine the massive amount of clinical and phenotypic data. Data science skills involve how to use computational methods and algorithms to analyze, manage, and interpret different types of data, and require interdisciplinary knowledge such as biomedical domain knowledge, computational programming, statistics, and mathematics. The Center for Pacific Innovations, Knowledge, and Opportunities (PIKO) is building a statewide clinical and translational research (CTR) infrastructure to improve the health of Indigenous Pacific People (IPP) – defined as Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders, and Filipinos. More data science expertise is required for the center to perform data intensive clinical and translational research and improve the health and well-being of the indigenous Pacific People (IPP). Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is in great needs local data scientists to provide data science support, training and conduct data science research related to health disparities and other sciences. To enhance the data science capacity in Hawaii PIKO, we plan to accomplish the following aims: Aim 1: Offer education and training opportunities in data science-related skills to students and scientists at all stages of development. Aim 2: Enhance biomedical research through the interactions with the Data Science Infrastructure. Aim 3: Establish data science partnerships with researchers from diverse fields as well as other collaborative partners. Completing the aims will add significance by addressing all the three program objectives: growing human capital with data science competencies, expanding infrastructure to support data science research, training, and education, and building data science partnerships

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