Project 443415

I am an ideal candidate for the Summer in Aging (SPA) training program, because I plan on studying the effect of symptomatic osteoarthritis (OA) on depression in Canadian older adults using the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). The strength of the CLSA cohort for my research topic is the large longitudinal cohort, information about OA diagnosis and symptoms at multiple joints, valid measure of depression (i.e., CES-D), and a broad range of clinical and socio-demographic information. This SPA training will also be relevant to other OA data sources career (i.e., Osteoarthritis Initiative and the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study) that I also plan to use in my research. My current doctoral program in epidemiology has equipped me in advanced quantitative and research methods that I will apply to learn analytic approaches to longitudinal data in the SPA training program. By participating in this training program as a first-year doctoral student in epidemiology, I will receive a solid foundation for my dissertation proposal on how to frame my research objectives, and an awareness of potential strengths and weakness of different methodological approaches using CLSA data. Public health is built on collaboration and knowledge gathering, and the training I will acquire through the SPA will include gaining exposure to the scientific community while attaining applicable knowledge and technical skills (i.e., grantsmanship, knowledge translation) required to further my career as an academic scientist. My career goal is to become an academic scientist and epidemiologist. I am pursing doctoral studies because I desire to increase my research abilities, to teach graduate students, to lead independent research, and to improve health outcomes for people with OA. OA is of deep interest to me and is increasingly relevant to an aging population.