Edward R. Roybal Centers for Translational Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences of Aging

The NIA’s Division of Behavioral and Social Research currently supports fifteen Roybal Centers, funded through RFA-AG-19-006 and RFA-AG-19-007, as well as a Coordinating Center, funded through RFA-AG-19-008. The goal of the Roybal Center program is the translation and integration of basic behavioral and social research findings into interventions to improve the lives of older people and the capacity of institutions to adapt to societal aging. Roybal Centers are structured within the conceptual framework of the multidirectional, translational NIH Stage Model to produce potent and implementable principle-driven behavioral interventions.

Eleven of the fifteen currently-funded Roybal Centers focus on the development of interventions in domains such as: improving mobility and prolonging independent living, fostering appropriate prescription medicine use, improving health care delivery utilizing behavioral economic-based interventions, promoting physical activity, coping with fear, decreasing and managing pain, and leveraging technology for behavior change. Four of the Roybals focus on the development of interventions for dementia care and are focused on: transforming residential palliative care for persons with dementia, using technologies to improve care support intervention development, decreasing care provider loneliness and isolation, and strengthening informal caregiving mastery.

The Roybal Centers build a research infrastructure designed to: (1) Promote the development of principle-driven behavioral interventions; (2) Foster the integration of basic science within the intervention development process; (3) Support the full range of activities necessary to conduct Stage 0 through IV research to lay the groundwork for successful transition from research to dissemination and implementation; (4) Accelerate the development of innovative ideas that result in successful intervention development applications (including successful grant funding from other sponsors); (5) Facilitate collaborations among academic researchers and commercial interests; (6) Draw new researchers to translational research on the development of principle-driven behavioral interventions to promote healthy aging, including interventions for care providers in persons with dementia and; (7) Provide a context for assembling multidisciplinary teams to solve practical problems.