Core Leader: Todd Brown, MD, PhD
In order to effectively meet JHU OAIC’s goal of translating frailty-related etiological discoveries into clinical studies that help maintain independence in older adults, and to overcome the substantial barriers to success in clinical investigation for junior investigators, the OAIC RC3 provides to supported OAIC investigators:
- Comprehensive training and mentorship in clinical research that spans from study design through implementation through outcome interpretation,
- Clinical research space and assistance with all aspects of forms and protocol development, data collection, and recruitment of human subjects,
- An active registry of nearly 500 older adults who have consented to be contacted for aging and frailty related studies
- Synergy with other cores in order to optimize all aspects of frailty-related study design, data collection, and biological measurement and junior faculty training.
Dr. Todd Brown, an endocrinologist with considerable human subjects research expertise and who plays a leading role in the ICTR at Johns Hopkins, leads RC3. The daily operations are led by a highly skilled and experienced research program manager with expertise in the measurement of frailty, mobility, and cognition, as well as expertise in protocol development and implementation and in subject recruitment and retention, in coordination with our OAIC administrator and Drs. Brown and Walston.
The central hub of RC3 is the Healthy Aging Studies Unit (HASU) located on the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The well trained personnel, the expertise that has been developed in the measurement of frailty and other aging phenotypes, the expertise in recruitment of older adults, and a large pool of older adults (registry) willing to participate in clinical research provides the human resources necessary to support the development, implementation, and finalization of a wide range of clinical studies that have a wide range of needs. Indeed, the space and personnel in this unit, including those supported by RC3 funding, provide resources for the conduct of frailty-related clinical and clinical intervention studies that facilitates design, recruitment, and implementation of clinical studies involving human subjects. The HASU was founded on the Bayview Medical Campus, adjacent to the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology clinical sites and adjacent to the Biology of Healthy Aging laboratories that are crucial to the function of RC2. Importantly, this unit provides the physical space necessary to interview and examine subjects for a wide range of studies. It provides touch down points for multiple clinical coordinators working across several studies.