PROJECT SUMMARY Candidate: Nicole DePasquale, PhD, MSPH, is an Assistant Professor at the Duke University School of Medicine and is fully committed to becoming an independently-funded investigator at the intersection of dyadic science and disease management. Her long-term career goal is to develop family-centered interventions to optimize individual and dyadic health among older adults with chronic disease and their family care partners. Dr. DePasquale’s interdisciplinary background makes her an ideal candidate to merge these two largely separate areas of inquiry. Her previous scientific training spans multiple fields of study, and her research experiences have been both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Career development and training plan: Dr. DePasquale’s career development and training plan feature a multidisciplinary mentoring team comprising a general internist/clinical epidemiologist, geriatrician, health services researcher, social/health psychologist, biostatistician, and board-certified nephrologist. This team will support her pursuit of 5 training areas chosen to provide targeted theoretical, methodological, and practical expertise needed to complete the K01 research and facilitate her transition to complete independence: 1) the fundamental aspects of caring for aging patients with kidney disease, 2) dyadic disease management, 3) applied research design and advanced quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques, 4) the development and testing of family-centered interventions, and 5) professional development (best research practices, research collaborations, leadership, and grant writing). Additional resources to foster her career development include Duke’s Claude D. Pepper Center; Edward R. Roybal Center; Offices for Faculty Development, Scientific Integrity, Research Mentoring, and Research Development; and Clinical Research Training Program. Research plan: The proposed research will use different methodological approaches to understand ways in which older patients and their family care partners manage the full course of chronic kidney disease (CKD) together, and how dyadic management affects individual and dyadic health. This research has 3 aims: 1) quantify associations of care partner contributions to disease self-care with patient CKD self-management self- efficacy and depression over time (secondary data analysis); 2) investigate the interrelations of dyadic disease appraisal, disease management, and health along the continuum of CKD progression (primary data collection through patient and care partner interviews and surveys); and 3) adapt and pilot test the feasibility of SHARE for CKD, a care planning program to support care dyads’ management of CKD, with CKD care dyads. The goal of this work is to move beyond individual experiences and outcomes related to CKD self-management by focusing on shared management within the care dyad, which will assist research, clinical care, and health policies in better supporting pati...