CORE C: EXTERNAL NETWORK Research on the social, economic, and biodemographic dimensions of aging depends on successful interinstitutional exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration. To foster these relationships, Duke’s Center for Population Health and Aging (CPHA) includes an External Network Core (ENC) that connects faculty, staff, and trainees at Duke with the national and international aging research community. The ENC will take advantage of the strengths of biosocial research on aging in the local North Carolina Research Triangle to support collaborative pilot proposals and an interinstitutional working group on the Social and Biological Determinants of Health, which features a unique, cross-disciplinary focus on integrating research in human populations and animal models. Through these activities, as well as support for conference travel and short-term collaborative visits, the ENC will identify promising faculty and trainees with an interest in aging research and provide crucial early stage support to grow the aging research community. Additionally, to showcase cutting-edge, emerging work in behavioral and social research on aging, the ENC will support themed workshops and symposia on topics of interest to the CPHA community. These events, in combination with the established, CPHA-supported annual meeting, “Demography Daze,” will feature important research advances, catalyze new opportunities for collaboration, and motivate new research directions within and outside Duke. The ENC thus takes advantage of the exceptional community of biosocial researchers at Duke, while simultaneously building connections with faculty and trainees on a regional, national, and global scale. It therefore advances the overarching aims of the P30 proposal as a whole, with particular relevance to integrating social science and life science approaches to understand aging across the life course.