The UCLA/Drew Center for Health Improvement for Minority Elders (CHIME) is a research and mentoring program that ultimately contributes to the reduction in health disparities for African American and Latino Elders by training and mentorship of minority faculty who advance their careers by conducting research on minority elders. To accomplish this goal, the UCLA/Drew CHIME has 4 overarching specific aims:

• To develop the research infrastructure needed to improve the health of minority elders through participatory research within local communities;
  
  
• To contribute to the development, evaluation, and dissemination of valid, reliable, and generalizable measurement tools that can be used to track health outcomes or measure critical social, behavioral, and economic predictors of the health and the health-care outcomes of minority elders;
  
  
• To build on UCLA GIM/HSR's and Drew's longstanding track record for the recruitment, retention, and promotion of minority researchers through mentorship and support of their efforts to conduct research on the health of minority elders and to participate in community collaborations designed to improve health;
  
  
• To broaden and stabilize both existing and new partnerships with communities to expand the pool of potential African American and Latino elders who are participants in research and the beneficiaries of the findings from both the research conducted under the auspices of CHIME and other funded research.

To this end, the CHIME Measurement Core develops and evaluates new and existing methods for the recruitment and retention of older African American and Latinos in research.

CHIME addresses these aims through structured activities that are organized in an Administration Core, an Investigator Development Core, and a Measurement Core.