In this brief, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research summarizes information from their evaluation of the 2024 Parks After Dark (PAD) program in Los Angeles County, including innovative “spotlights” that made PAD unique. PAD was a county initiative led by the Department of Parks and Recreation in partnership with other county departments and community-based organizations. In its 14th year, PAD programming — including sports, entertainment, activities, and more — was offered for eight weeks on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 34 parks between June and August 2024.

Findings: Evaluators found that PAD continued to make significant progress in achieving its goals by providing quality recreational programming in a safe and family-friendly environment. PAD provided programming for participants of all ages with a more recent focus on Youth and Seniors.

While ensuring participants’ sense of safety at parks while attending PAD events, PAD also encouraged meaningful collaboration between participating county departments and community-based organizations. PAD contributed to participant’s feelings of well-being, family togetherness, social cohesion, and involved a diverse range of participants in community-driven programming in a meaningful way. PAD may have also helped to reduce the burden of disease for those that engaged in sports and exercise activities.
 

The Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) is a flagship education, training, and development program of the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) focused on increasing the number and diversity of researchers in aging. Authors sought to assess the program's contributions to geriatric and gerontology education by examining the scientific productivity of 294 RCMAR scientists who received pilot funding from the program during the last complete grant cycle, 2018 to 2023.

Across the 18 funded sites, the scientists obtained 53 NIH grants and 29 NIA-specific grants. They published 281 manuscripts, of which 141 were noted as direct outcomes of the pilot funding and support received through the program.

Findings: The findings indicated that the RCMAR program in its last cycle succeeded in promoting education and scientific career development of researchers from diverse backgrounds and researchers focused on health disparities to conduct transdisciplinary social and behavioral aging research.
 

Health centers (HCs) play a crucial and integral role in addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) among vulnerable and underserved populations, yet data on SDOH assessment and subsequent actions is limited. Authors conducted a systematic review to understand the existing evidence of integration of SDOH into HC primary-care practices.

Findings: Database searches yielded 3,516 studies, of which 41 articles met the inclusion criteria. A majority of studies showed that HCs primarily captured patient-level rather than community-level SDOH data. Studies also showed that HCs utilized SDOH in electronic health records but capabilities varied widely. A few studies indicated that HCs measured health-related outcomes of integrating SDOH data. The review highlighted that many knowledge gaps exist in the collection, use, and assessment of impact of these data on outcomes, and future research is needed to address this knowledge gap.