Prevention Research Training in Mental Health This is a training grant proposal from the Baltimore Prevention Research Center housed at the Department of Mental Hygiene, Johns Hopkins University. The proposal involves a collaborative training effort with prevention scientists and statistical methodologists to train post-doctoral fellows in the field of prevention. Special attention is planned for recruiting and training fellows who have doctorates in statistics or a closely related field. Reducing Violence by Joining Education and Prevention This is a three-year development project to refine and manualize school-based interventions for preventing aggression and violence.Built on the existing interventions tested through 3 randomized trials at Hopkins and one trial at the Oregon Social Learning Center, this project focuses on classroom-based interventions for first graders—including group contingent behavioral and learning components, as well as school-based, neighborhood-based, and pre-service/in-service training for elementary school teachers. During this development, we will develop a design for a multi-center randomized field trial that tests this ecologically based intervention. Designs and Analyses for Mental Health Preventive Trials This project funds the Prevention Science and Methodology Group (PSMG) in designing and analyzing preventive field trials aimed at mental health problems and drug abuse. Methods involve growth modeling and missing data procedures. Charlotte County Healthy Aging Study (HEALS) This community-based study of 466 Caucasian elders living in two census tracts in Charlotte County, Florida seeks to study risk factors for cognitive function, as well as to understand life satisfaction and quality of life in an elder population. Age-related neurodegenerative diseases in Micronesia This large program project seeks to understand the neurobiological, genetic and epidemiologic characteristics of Marianna dementia found on Guam. Dr. Borenstein Graves is the study's epidemiologist. We will be conducting a large prevalence study (approximately 2,600 individuals) and following this cohort for incident dementia in the years to come. Genetic Risk Factors for Alzheimer's Disease among African Americans This is a case-control study to investigate genetic causes of Alzheimer's disease and interactions between vascular disease, environmental factors and genetic factors. The study is being done at Johns Hopkins University and with collaborators at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI. USF's involvement is to assist the PI at Hopkins with methodologic and epidemiologic aspects of the study. Body Mass Index as a Predictor of Cardiovascular Disease in the Elderly  more Explaining Adverse Heart Disease Trends in African Americans: Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Geographic Factors Social Environment and Rural Community Health Paraprofessional Workforce Development Program  more Statistical Innovations to Risk Assessment of Neurotoxicity To develop efficient experimental design and new statistical methods to detect and model neurotoxic risk due to exposure to environmental agents; to develop and test methods for estimating benchmark dose of neurotoxicity Evaluation of Syndromic Surveillance System for Detection of Bioterrorism Attack To evaluate a syndromic surveillance system for earlier detection of bioterrorism attack. It involves assessment of syndromic data reliability, sensitivity and specificity of statistical and computational algorithm, as well as application of new statistical methods

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