Project Grant R01AG109115

The National Institute on Aging awarded Regents of the University of Michigan $2.114 million on September 2, 2026, under the Aging Research program (CFDA 93.866) to expand and enhance the National Neighborhood Data Archive (NANDA), a national repository of contextual measures designed for integration into aging research workflows and linkages with longitudinal studies.

The award funds six specific aims. Three aims support NANDA's data infrastructure: administrative activities, data creation and dissemination activities, and methodological innovation with spatially and temporally linked data. Three research aims examine how neighborhood-level social and environmental factors contribute to respiratory illness among older adults, including identifying high- and low-burden respiratory illness neighborhoods across the United States, determining the optimal spatial scale that captures heterogeneity in illness burden across rural and urban contexts and transmission pathways, and assessing whether residence in high-burden neighborhoods increases the risk of hospitalization or mortality, with focus on the modifying role of immune aging using linked data from the Health and Retirement Study.

The award provides a nationally reproducible, publicly available data resource on environmental factors for older adult health. Work is performed at Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a period of performance extending from September 2, 2026, to June 30, 2031.