CRAHW, Centre for Research on Ageing, Health & Wellbeing, NHMRC

Established in 2012, the Centre for Research on Ageing, Health & Wellbeing (CRAHW) is a research intensive centre located within the Research School of Population Health.

CRAHW aims to optimise the well-being of individuals and communities through the lifecourse by conducting innovative and translational research and contributing to public policy. We work in methodological and theoretical traditions drawn from psychology, sociology and epidemiology that focus on adult development and ageing. The centre has particular expertise in cognitive ageing and dementia, psychiatric epidemiology, neuroimaging, social gerontology, healthy ageing and substance use. Our work involves conducting and analysing large-scale epidemiological studies as well as intervention studies. CRAHW hosts a node of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research and a Dementia Collaborative Research Centre.

CRAHW comprises academics, visitors and adjunct members, students and administrative staff. The Personality & Total Health (PATH) Through Life project is a large, on-going, population-based, longitudinal cohort study comprising approximately 7500 participants ranging from early to late adulthood. The project aims to track and define the lifespan course of depression, anxiety, substance use and cognitive ability, identify environmental risk and protective factors within these domains, and examine the relationships between depression, anxiety and substance use with cognitive ability and dementia.

The PATH Through Life project is a 20 year longitudinal cohort study of 7,485 young (aged 20-24 at baseline), midlife (aged 40-44 at baseline) and older (aged 60-64 at baseline) adults randomly sampled from the electoral roll of the Australian Capital Territory and the nearby city of Queanbeyan.

The original aims of the project are outlined below.

To delineate the course of depression, anxiety, substance use and cognitive ability with increasing age across the adult life span.

To identify environmental risk, genetic risk and protective factors influencing individual differences in the course of these characteristics.

To investigate interrelationships over time between the three domains of: depression and anxiety, substance use, and cognitive ability and dementia.