The funding will total more than $1.8 million over four years. The University-wide effort will also receive support from the Office of the Provost at Harvard University, HSPH, and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. The program will be based at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health in Cambridge.

Bloom will direct the program. David Canning, professor of economics and international health in the Department of Population and International Health, will serve as deputy director. Both are part of an executive committee that includes Harvard professors Christopher Murray, Gary King, Nicholas Christakis, and Lisa Berkman.

"Understanding the process of population aging is an essential part of facing up to the problems that will confront us in the coming century, and will have implications for the global burden of disease, the financing of Social Security and health care systems, and the reduction of poverty," said Canning. "The global nature of the world economy, with links through migration, trade, and investment flows, means that the effects of aging and demographic change are linked across countries and have to be considered at the global as well as the national level."

Research will focus on the measurement of the global pattern of disease, mortality, and morbidity in aging populations; determinants of population health and aging; and demographic and economic consequences of global aging.

One major challenge to healthy aging is the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and approximately one-third of the funding has been earmarked for research in this area.

The program will feature workshops, seminars, an annual conference, working papers, funding for pilot projects, and collaboration with international research centers, in particular with the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies in South Africa.

The program joins three others newly funded by the NIA as Centers on the Demography of Aging, in addition to nine ongoing Centers at institutions around the U.S.