Roybal Coordinating Center
to Accelerate Translational Aging Research
About the Roybal Program
The goal of the Roybal program is to translate and integrate basic behavioral and social research findings into interventions that improve the lives of older people while strengthening the capacity of institutions to adapt to societal aging. Roybal Centers are structured within the conceptual framework of the multidirectional and translational NIH Stage Model to produce potent and implementable, principle-driven behavioral interventions.
ROYBAL CENTERS.
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 healthcare delivery by utilizing economic-based behavioral interventions, promoting physical activity, coping with fear, decreasing and managing pain, and leveraging technology for behavior change. The four remaining Roybal Centers focus on the development of interventions for dementia care by transforming residential palliative care for persons with dementia, using technologies to improve care-support intervention development, decreasing care-provider isolation, and strengthening informal caregiving skills.
​​The Roybal Centers collectively build a research infrastructure designed to meet the following goals:
​
ROYBAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
Karina W. Davidson, PhD, MASc, FAHA
Principal Investigator, Roybal Resource and Coordinating Center
Our Leadership
For more than 25 years, Dr. Davidson has served in leadership roles for teams focused on the advancement of scientific, educational and patient care missions through both the generation and implementation of evidence-based practices. She has been the principal investigator of more than 30 federally funded grants and authored over 300 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Davidson is also past chair of the United States Preventive Services Task Force. She has a PhD in clinical health psychology and a MASc in industrial/organizational psychology. Dr. Davidson earned her Masters of Applied Science in industrial/organizational psychology, as well as her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Waterloo (Canada).