Author: Jeannine Sato

IMPACT collaboratory announces recipients of two funding mechanisms

Posted on by Jeannine Sato

The NIA IMPACT Collaboratory is pleased to announce the awardees of the Pilot Grants Cycle 4B, and the Demonstration Projects Program Cycle 3. Awardees of these funding opportunities will be supported by the IMPACT cores and teams to conduct embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs) of non-pharmacological interventions within healthcare systems to improve care for people living with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (ADRD) and their care partners. IMPACT prioritizes applications that promote health equity and address dementia care for people of all backgrounds. Learn more about the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory on the website. Read more about these opportunities and our newest awardees below.

Pilot Grant Program Cycle 4B

The Pilot Grant Program funds several one-year pilot ePCTs that test non-pharmacological interventions embedded in health care systems to improve care for people living with AD/ADRD and their care partners. Pilot studies are conducted to generate the preliminary data necessary to design and conduct future full-scale Stage IV effectiveness ePCT (based on the NIH Stage Model) that will be funded through other grant mechanisms (National Institutes of Health or other sources).

Recipients of the Pilot Cycle 4B Awards:

  • Scott Dresden, MD, MS, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
    Deprescribing Potentially Inappropriate Medications in the Emergency Department for Persons Living with Dementia
  • Teresita Hogan, MD, FACEP, University of Chicago
    Pragmatic Use of PAIN-Advanced Dementia Scale in Emergency Hip Fracture Care

Demonstration Projects Program

The Demonstration Projects Program supports full-scale, Stage IV effectiveness ePCTs testing non-pharmacological interventions for people living with AD/ADRD and their care partners that are linked to the needs of a health care system. The intervention typically includes relatively simple system changes, direct patient outreach, or successfully piloted programs ready for testing at scale. The goal of the demonstration project is to generate evidence on effective care delivery practices that can be expanded and/or implemented in other systems.

Recipients of the Demonstration Projects Awards:

Mor serves on NIH Collaboratory panel to discuss making health decisions based on PCTs

Posted on by Jeannine Sato

IMPACT multiple principal investigator and longtime professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown University, Vincent Mor, PhD served as a panelist during the National Institutes of Health (NIH)  Collaboratory Workshop. “Getting the Right Evidence to Decision-Makers Faster.” The panel, held on June 29, was titled “How Have Health Systems Made Decisions Based on Evidence Collected in PCTs?” and discussed how healthcare system leaders can evaluate research and implement findings.

Watch the full panel video.

Quiñones interviewed on health equity in ePCT landscape during annual NIH meeting

Posted on by Jeannine Sato

IMPACT Health Equity Team (HET) leader Ana Quiñones, PhD, MS and colleague Dr. Anne Trontell reflected on health equity in the embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs) landscape during the 2023 NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory Annual Steering Committee Meeting.

The focus of the meeting was health equity in ePCTs and Quiñones spoke about the efforts of the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory to include health equity approaches in all aspects of its care and research efforts, resulting in a series of best practice recommendations.

Comments from both scholars were published in the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory website, rethinkingclinicaltrials.org.

Read the full article.

NIH features IMPACT members’ study on music’s effects on Alzheimer’s symptoms

Posted on by Jeannine Sato

The research of IMPACT Multiple Principal Investigator  Vince Mor, PhD and member Ellen McCreedy, PhD, MPH is featured in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) blog post on the effects of music and Alzheimer’s disease. The Blog titled, “Could ‘musical medicine’ influence healthy aging?” highlights the Music and MEmory: A Pragmatic TRIal for Nursing Home Residents with ALzheimer’s Disease (METRIcAL) project.

Led by Mor and McCreedy, the METRIcAL study explored whether customized playlists of preferred music could reduce common dementia symptoms. Disruptive or disturbing symptoms like pacing, calling out verbally, or sundowning, a phenomenon where people with Alzheimer’s disease experience restlessness, agitation, irritability, or confusion in the late afternoon and early evening, were measured during the study in hopes to alleviate symptoms, and lessen reliance on antipsychotic drugs.

Read the NIH blog post.

Mor to present on Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory at NIH virtual workshop

Posted on by Jeannine Sato

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory will host a virtual workshop, “Getting the Right Evidence to Decision-Makers Faster: Insights from the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory”. The virtual event will be held June 20-21 to explore the critical cycle of evidence generation to decision-making by health system leaders looking to implement the findings of pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs).

IMPACT multiple principal investigator Vincent Mor, PhD will participate in Panel 1 on the first day entitled “How have health systems made decisions based on evidence collected in PCTs?” Mor will be commenting on IMPACT as well as on the PROVEN pragmatic trial conducted with IMPACT Principal Investigator Susan Mitchell, MD PhD.

The workshop is free and open to the public. Registration is required.