Network Core Pilot Project Program
Each year, we award two Network Core Pilot Projects, in addition to our Emerging Scholar Awards. Investigators are invited to submit proposals for pilot funding to support research projects that illuminate how biological, psychosocial, and environmental factors intersect throughout the life course to generate disparities in health and well-being at older ages.
We support novel pilot projects that address disparities in health and aging across CAPS’s three research themes:
- Biosocial Processes. Network Core activities will examine the impact of social factors and contexts distinct to SM populations as they intersect with genomic, epigenetic, and biological factors that shape mental, physical, and cognitive health trajectories in aging SM populations.
- Family and Social Engagement. Network Core activities will examine how family, relationships, social engagement, caregiving, and living arrangements uniquely influence the experience and pace of aging among SM populations.
- Socioeconomic and Institutional Contexts. Network Core activities will examine how socioeconomic and institutional contexts (e.g., schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, geopolitical contexts) throughout life confer unique risks or advantages for the health and well-being of aging SM populations.
Pilot projects should be designed to support the development of a larger research project that will be submitted under an NIA grant mechanism (R03, R01, R21). Pilot projects are not intended to support work to complete a study or as an addendum to an existing project.
Current Pilot Project Awards 2025-2026
Marital Stress and Alcohol Use among Same- and Different-Sex Couples
Amanda Pollitt, Assistant Professor, Department of Health Sciences, Northern Arizona University
Sexual and gender minorities are three times more likely than heterosexuals to consume alcohol and are more likely to drink heavily, which contributes to health disadvantages for sexual minority older adults. Marital strain is strongly associated with alcohol use across the lifespan, and alcohol can adversely affect health and cognition. Since marriage has only recently been widely available to same-sex couples, little is known about how marital stress and alcohol use unfold in tandem for same-sex couples or how this compares to different-sex couples. Approach: Data from the Health and Relationships Project, which includes three waves of dyadic daily data, will be used to examine how marital stress from one spouse influences the other spouse’s alcohol use on a day-to-day basis among same- and different-sex couples and how these daily dynamics change over a 10-year period in mid- to later adulthood.
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State Legislation and Policies and Cognitive Decline
Lawrence Stacey, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University
This project will examine how a wide range of anti- and protective-LGBT state legislation and state policies are associated with cognitive decline in the United States. Using data from the Human Rights Campaign and Movement Advancement Project to track the evolution of LGBT legislation and policies at the state level and data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), I will investigate how such policies are associated with confusion or memory loss, day-to-day activities, and needed assistance in midlife and later life for a probability-based sample of Americans, and whether such associations vary for LGBT and non-LGBT populations.
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