# Data Management and Methods Core

> **NIH NIH P01** · BROWN UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $643,648

## Abstract

Project Summary
There are over six million people in the United States who currently live with Alzheimer's disease and related
dementias (ADRD) with this number expected to double by 2050. As this population continues to grow, and
receive care from the US Medicare and Medicaid programs, it is essential to conduct rigorous quantitative
analysis to understand how our current care system caring for the complex care needs of this population.
Quantitative research on this topic in recent years has been hindered by two key factors. First, the Medicare
Advantage program has been growing rapidly and now enrolls over 50% of all Medicare beneficiaries. In MA,
private plans are paid to provide for beneficiary care needs, and plans can differ significantly from Traditional
Medicare in terms of the services it provides, and the data it collects. The growth of MA necessitates methods
development to ensure that outcomes and diagnoses are being accurately accounted for. The second
challenge is the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to widespread disruptions in care that make it difficult to
measure the causal impact of policies that were implemented during the same time period. The Data
Management and Methods Core C of this P01 proposal will address these issues and provide the quantitative
and analytic backbone to each of the proposal's four projects. Specifically, Core C will assemble project data
and develop methods for tracking and cleaning longitudinal data, calculate uniform, core measures for use in
project analysis, develop and validate methods for the use of Medicare Advantage data, provide analytic and
statistical support to all projects, develop and test novel methods for conducting longitudinal causal inference
study designs in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and develop new Medicare Advantage data for our
website LTCFocus.org which publicly reports nursing home level statistics and characteristics. This core will
innovate through using newly released Health and Retirement Survey data to validate methods for diagnosing
ADRD in the MA program, perform validations of Medicare Advantage encounter data to ensure their
usefulness in research projects, develop methods for causal inference that incorporate shocks such as the
pandemic, and by making previously availible Medicare Advantage data available for researchers and
policymakers. The work of this core will be impactful by enabling the projects included in this P01, but also
through the validations and methods development which will have broad applicability for other researchers
focused on ADRD.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10934968
- **Project number:** 2P01AG027296-16
- **Recipient organization:** BROWN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** David Joseph Meyers
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $643,648
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2007-09-15 → 2029-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10934968

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10934968, Data Management and Methods Core (2P01AG027296-16). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10934968. Licensed CC0.

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