Advanced Research Institute (ARI) Supporting the Geriatric Mental Health Research Pipeline

The Advanced Research Institute (ARI) in Mental Health and Aging is a NIMH-funded mentoring network to help transition early-career faculty to indepen-dent investigators and scientific leaders. Since 2004, ARI has enrolled 184 Schol-ars from 61 institutions across 34 states. We describe the ARI components and assess the impact and outcomes of ARI on research careers of participants. Out-comes of ARI graduates (n = 165) came from NIH Reporter, brief surveys, and CVs: 87.3% remained active researchers, 83.6% performed scientific service, and 80.6% obtained federal grants. A population-based analysis examined NIMH mentored K awardees initially funded from 2002-2018 (n = 1160): in this group, 77.1% (47/61) of ARI participants versus 49.5% (544/1099) of non-participants obtained an R01. Controlling for time, ARI participants were 3.2 times more likely to achieve R01 funding than nonparticipants. Given the struggle to reduce attrition from the research career pipeline, the effectiveness of ARI model could be relevant to other fields. (Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2023; 31:1209-1215)