Released on June 14, 2023

UCF has been awarded $1.85 million to pilot a five-year, multidisciplinary program to increase diversity among student researchers focused on health disparities in aging.

UCF students sitting at desks studying
The goal of the INTREPID program is to increase the number of underrepresented and disadvantaged undergraduate M-STEM (medical, science, technology, engineering and math) students who advance into graduate research programs focused on health disparities in aging.

The number of older adults in the U.S. population is growing, expecting to nearly double by 2060, and becoming more diverse with racial and ethnic minority populations projected to increase by 105% by 2040.

“As a society, we’re not ready for that,” says Norma Conner, a professor in the University of Central Florida’s College of Nursing. “We need to be cognizant of the large population of older adults that is going to be ours to care for, and we need to have a better understanding that reflects them.”

To accomplish this, a multidisciplinary team of UCF researchers created INTREPID (Investigators from Novices, a Transdisciplinary Research Education Program to Increase Diversity). The five-year program, which admits its first cohort of students this summer, is funded by a $1.85 million R25 Research Education Program grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Aging.

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