Project Grant R01AG099180

The National Institute on Aging awarded the Regents of the University of Colorado $904,426 on September 1, 2026, under the Aging Research program (CFDA 93.866) to conduct a mixed-methods investigation of how neighborhood features shape cognitive health across the adult life course.

The recipient will conduct in-depth interviews with 240 adults across San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta, and New York City to identify which neighborhood services, amenities, and hazards influence cognitive health behaviors in emerging adulthood (ages 18–29), established adulthood (30–44), midlife (45–64), and later life (65+). Qualitative findings will then inform quantitative analyses using four national longitudinal studies: the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, Americans' Changing Lives, Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke, and the Health and Retirement Study. These datasets collectively span adolescence to end of life with repeated measurements on nearly 90,000 unique respondents. The project expands a "cognability" measure—inspired by walkability metrics—to capture how neighborhoods shape cognitive health through social and behavioral pathways and to probe timing, scale, and combinations of key neighborhood features.

Work is performed in Boulder, Colorado. The period of performance runs from September 1, 2026, through April 30, 2031. This is a Project Grant.