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.