Indispensable impact: From NIA Summer Institute to Butler‐Williams Scholars Program

Field: Health Professions (Health Sciences)

Congratulations to the National Institute on Aging (NIA) on your 50th Anniversary, 18,262 days, and 438,288 hours of good work! Caring for the older adult population poses a unique array of challenges and requires an equally unique and competent workforce to confront and conquer these challenges. Over the next 26 years, the number of Americans aged 65 and older is projected to rise to 85.7 million, up from 55 million in 2021.1 Training future scientists in aging is indispensable and was vitally important to Dr. Robert Butler, founding director of the NIA (1975–1982), a pioneer in aging sciences remembered for his observations in the 1976 Pulitzer award-winning book "Why Survive? Being Old in America".2 He wrote, "We have shaped a society which is extremely harsh to live in when one is old. The tragedy of old age is not the fact that each of us must grow old and die but that the process of doing so has been made unnecessarily and at times excruciatingly painful, humiliating, debilitating, and isolating through insensitivity, ignorance, and poverty"(p.2–3).3 It is within this context that Robert Butler, M.D., T. Franklin Williams, M.D., second director of the NIA (1983–1991), and Richard J. Hodes, M.D., third and longest serving NIA director, appointed in 1993, taught hundreds about the fields of neuroscience, biology of aging, geriatrics, and gerontology, and are credited with the longevity of what many senior scientists remember as the Summer Institute on Aging Research. Established in 1986, with first graduating class in 1987, the program was renamed in honor of doctors Butler and Williams in 2013. The Butler-Williams (B-W) Scholars Program offers early career researchers an intensive (40+ hours) one-week experience focused on serious issues, opportunities, gaps, and challenges of research on aging, and the need for cutting-edge science and scientists. Innovations under Dr. Hodes' leadership have included research on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) to include biomarkers, gene discovery and an array of treatments; addressing health disparities to include the work of the National Advisory Council on Aging Task Force on Minority Aging Research Health Disparities Framework,4 workforce diversity, health equity; and importantly training the next generation of scientists. Approximately 1500 early career scientists attended an NIA Summer Institute or B-W Scholars Program, representing most of the states and territories of the United States. In recent years, the application rate for the B-W Scholars Program has soared above 200 and the National Advisory Council on Aging, in 2020, recommended an expansion of the program by increasing the number of participants by five individuals per class. The impact of the program and return on investment in early careerists in aging are in enhanced diversity and female gender representation, publications and grant applications to the NIH, unprecedented access to NIA/NIH staff, program faculty, and many of the long term, top funded investigators with substantial research support from NIA, and critically we believe, retention in aging sciences and research.5 There is no greater sense of accomplishment than when those you mentor surpass your accomplishments and greatest aspirations for them. Graduates of the Summer Institute/B-W Scholars Program have contributed to significant advancement in aging research with thousands of publications, including books and chapters, editorials, clinical practice guidelines, web publications, media releases, interviews and countless scientific podium and workshop presentations. A photograph, one amongst many, was selected to illustrate the many classes since 1987 (Figure 1). Graduates of the program have received millions, perhaps billions, in research funding from NIH and related funding sources while maintaining proficiency in classroom instruction and clinical practice. Their research roles and role titles range from acting NIH director, principal investigators, coinvestigators, multiple investigators, inventors, and patent holders. Visiting professorships have been held nationally and internationally in countries around the world. Scholars have soared to heights in administration leading Universities, Schools, Departments, and Centers on Aging. All continue to mentor as they have been mentored, nationally and internationally, while sharpening aging focus, strengthening system innovation, and quality improvements. Most have found their way back to the NIH/NIA and given service in Peer Review. Dr. Amy S. Kelly, class of 2009, has found her way back as the first Summer Institute/B-W Scholar to serve as a permanent Deputy Director of the NIA. A multitude of remarkable individuals have earned national and international acclaim based on their research interests and early research foci with awards, honors, and tributes that resoundingly recognize their scientific contributions across a diverse spectrum of aging disciplines (see Table 1). These accolades stand as a testament to their exceptional accomplishments. The Summer Institute/B-W Scholars Program will celebrate its 50th Anniversary in the year 2036. The celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the National Institute on Aging is infused with profound gratitude and reverence for half a century of aging research excellence! All the authors read and approved the final letter. No specific funding was received for this work. Each of the authors is a past participant in the NIA Butler-Williams Scholars Program/Summer Institute on Aging Research and/or had an employee/employer relationship with the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging (NIA). None.