Richard (Rick) Fortinsky, PhD, is a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, where he is a core faculty member at the UConn Center on Aging and holds the Health Net, Inc. Endowed Chair in Geriatrics and Gerontology. Dr. Fortinsky collaborates with colleagues from a wide range of scientific disciplines, and with numerous healthcare system and community-based organization partners, to design and carry out studies intended to improve healthcare and optimize health-related outcomes for community-dwelling older adults living with Alzheimer’s disease and AD-related dementia and their families. Currently he serves as principal investigator (PI) for a study funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute designed to test an in-home, team-based intervention targeting older adults with cognitive vulnerability due to dementia, depression, and/or a history of delirium. He is also Multiple PI for the NIA-funded UConn Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, and Multiple PI for an NIA-funded study examining the effects of dementia, race, and ethnicity on health-related outcomes and achievement of goals of care in a statewide population enrolled in a Medicaid Home and Community-based service program.

Laura N. Gitlin, PhD, FGSA, FAAN, is dean and distinguished professor at the College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University. She has an adjunct appointment in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and School of Medicine. Her research focuses on developing strategies for aging at home with a particular focus on dementia care. Dr. Gitlin and her teams have conducted over 20 clinical trials with some interventions being implemented worldwide. She currently has several multi-site studies, one of which is a pragmatic trial to test a caregiver support program that augments adult day services with Dr. Joseph Gaugler. She recently co-authored a book with Dr. Nancy Hodgson, Better Living with Dementia: Implications for Individuals, Families, Communities and Societies (Academic Press), based on a MOOC with over 80,000 participants worldwide; and another with Dr. Catherine Piersol, A Caregiver’s Guide to Dementia: Using Activities and Other Strategies to Prevent, Reduce and Manage Behavioral Symptoms (Camino Books).

Nancy A. Hodgson, PhD, RN, FAAN, is professor and chair in the Department of Biobehavioral Health and the Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. She brings 30 years of experience in developing, evaluating, disseminating, and implementing interventions that ease neuropsychiatric symptoms and promote function and quality of life for diverse populations of people living with dementia and their caregivers. This work has helped to inform care practices for people living with dementia and their caregivers through the development of palliative care protocols that address the leading symptoms in dementia that cause distress or impair quality of life. As a clinician and educator, Dr. Hodgson seeks out implementation strategies to foster academic-community partnership by linking research and practice in order to move evidence-based findings into dementia care practice.

Sokha Koeuth, PhD, MPH, has over 10 years of experience in higher education with extensive interprofessional and aging project experience. She began her career at the Jefferson Interprofessional Education Center working with faculty, students, and health mentors (community volunteers) living with chronic conditions and impairments. The health mentors informally met with student teams to teach them how to care for patients from a client perspective. She has first-hand experience with the coordination of building learning modules and debriefing experiences to improve communication and teamwork. From there she gained experience in planning, implementing, and evaluating an evidence-based program. As a project manager at Johns Hopkins University, she oversaw, The Tailored Activity Program (TAP): New Ways for Better Days for persons living with dementia and their caregiver(s) and the annual Summer Research Institutes on Behavioral Interventions. Currently, she is the project manager at the College of Nursing and Health Professions at Drexel University. She oversees funded research studies by the National Institutes of Health, TAP and manages a university- wide initiative for implementation science research. She continues to develop, design, implement, and evaluate programs for health promotion and care for persons living with dementia and their caregiver(s).