Insights into Designing Educational Materials for Persons Living with Dementia: A Focus Group Study
April 29, 2024 Continue reading
Author: Jeannine Sato
Hanson will assist new Science Advisor at American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine
IMPACT’s Laura Hanson MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will assist Stacy Fisher, MD, who was recently selected as the new Scientific Advisor of The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM). The positions will guide AAHPM’s efforts to advance research in hospice and palliative care and deepen its relationships with key partners in the field. In addition to research goals, the Scientific Advisor will support researcher mentoring, training and career development.
Highlights from the 2024 IMPACT Annual Meetings
The NIA IMPACT Collaboratory held the 5th annual Business Meeting on April 2, 2024, and hosted the 3rd annual Scientific Conference on embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials (ePCTs) in dementia care on April 3-4, 2024.
The meetings, held in Bethesda MD and via zoom for virtual attendees, were attended by more than 200 participants.
Annual Business Meeting
Highlights from the event include remarks from Partha Bhattacharyya, PhD, from the National Institute on Aging, a Mission Moment presented by Eric Larson, MD, MPH, a review of IMPACT’s first five years from multiple principal investigators, Vince Mor, PhD and Susan Mitchell, MD, MPH, and presentations from each of IMPACT’s ten cores and teams highlighting their accomplishments, challenges and goals for future work to further build the field.
The meeting began with a land acknowledgment reflection moment from IMPACT Design and Statistics Core leader, Heather Allore, PhD, followed by a welcome address from Vince Mor, PhD. Remarks from the National Institute on Aging were provided by IMPACT program officer, Partha Bhattacharyya, PhD.
The Mission Moment was provided by the distinguished Eric Larson, MD, MPH, a professor at University of Washington, retired executive director of Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and vice president for research and healthcare innovation at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington, and former Leader of IMPACT’s Health Care Systems Core Dr. Larson began by reminding the group about how far the field has come in the last 60 years and called on researchers and healthcare providers to follow the Guiding Principles for Dementia Care, as described in “Meeting the Challenge of Caring for Persons Living with Dementia and Their Care Partners and Caregivers A Way Forward “ released in February 2021 from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. These principles include:
- person-centeredness
- promotion of well-being
- attention to each person’s needs with respect and dignity
- justice
- racial, ethnic, sexual, cultural, and linguistic, inclusivity
- accessibility and affordability
Susan Mitchell, MD MPH revisited the mission of IMPACT and the many accomplishments achieved towards fulling this mission since IMPACT was launched 5 years ago. Presentations from each of the cores and teams followed, each reviewing their initial aims as calls to action and highlighting major contributions, collaborations and ongoing priorities for the field. To commemorate these first five years of growth and accomplishment, Jo Byrne from seeyourwords created a graphical recording of the event and highlights.
Scientific Conference on embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials (ePCTs)
This year marked IMPACT’s 3rd annual Scientific Conference on embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials (ePCTs).
The goal of the event is to disseminate knowledge, promote research development, and engage partners to improve the care and health outcomes of people living with dementia (PLWD) and their care partners (CP). The conference provides an interactive forum for participants to present research and discuss emerging insights to improve dementia care.
This year’s conference was open to the public and featured six topic-based moderated sessions with presentations from speakers from the IMPACT community and NIA- funded researchers. Topics discussed included:
- Palliative Care and Symptom Management
- METHODS: Advancing the electronic health record platforms to improve outcome ascertainment in ePCTs
- ePCTs of Deprescribing Interventions in Dementia
- ePCT of Intervention for Early Detection of Dementia
- Methods Using the Long-Term Care Data Cooperative for ePCTs in Dementia Care
- ePCTs in High Need Populations with PLWD
Each session included multiple presentations, followed by thoughtful panel discussions. The Scientific Conference included a poster session featuring ongoing work of 20 early to mid-career investigators selected from a national call for submissions.
View the Annual Conference page for the full agenda, conference session recordings and images from the conference.
IMPACT members share pandemic-era nursing home dementia care findings in JAGS article
IMPACT members Kathleen Unroe, MD, MHA, MS and Health Care Systems Scholar Gail Towsley, PhD, MS, NHA published an article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS). The editorial article, Learning from the experience of dementia care for nursing home residents during the pandemic, comments on an article by Gadbois et al, about nursing home care during the COVID pandemic. Unroe and Towsley comment on issues including the need for dementia care specific staff training, the value of telehealth communication, and the particular importance of expanding family roles in nursing home care. The authors describe the creation of the Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition as a response to pandemic-era policies which prevented family members from visiting nursing home residents to limit COVID transmission
PR Newswire announces Joseph E. Gaugler, Ph.D to be honored as the 2024 Distinguished Ambassador in Aging by the Aging Life Care Association®
PR Newswire distributed a press release announcing that Joseph E. Gaugler, PhD will be honored as the 2024 Distinguished Ambassador in Aging by the Aging Life Care Association®.
Dr. Gaugler will be recognized following his keynote address “Alzheimer’s Disease Update: Testing, Treatment and Teamwork” on April 18 at the Royal Sonesta Downtown during the association’s 40th annual conference in Minneapolis, MN on April 18.
IMPACT highlighted in NIA 50th anniversary blog post
The IMPACT Collaboratory is highlighted in a blog post by Lis Nielsen, director of NIA’s Division of Behavior and Social Research (DBSR), celebrating the National Institute on Aging’s 50th anniversary.
In the blog, Dr. Nielsen reflects on NIA’s developments over its first five decades and looks forward to opportunities ahead. IMPACT is featured as an example of one of the ways NIA is supporting efforts to understand and improve dementia care. Nielsen describes NIA’s work on aging from an interdisciplinary perspective, while exploring its growing research infrastructure using evidence-based tools to support the work.
