Congratulations to Andrew Kiselica, PhD, Jung Kwak, PhD, MSW, and Karen Moss, PhD, RN, CNL, FNAP, FGSA, on their recent R01 Awards!

Dr. Kiselica received the 2022 IMPACT Career Development Award for his project Technology Assistance in Dementia Tech-AiD to improve the care of people living with dementia and their care partners.

His recent 5-year R01 for the TECHReserve Cohort Study continues this work. He and his team will work with a cohort of 300 older adults to collect passive digital markers, tests of technology skill, plasma biomarkers, MRI/fMRI, and clinical data over the course of two years. The aim of the research is to answer two key questions: 1) Does technology use protect against cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s pathology? and 2) How do the effects of technology use manifest in functional and structural brain changes?

Dr. Kwak received the 2022 IMPACT Health Care Systems Scholars award for her project “Co-Designing Care Transition Support for Dementia Patients and Care Partners.”

Her recent $3 million R01 award from the National Institutes of Aging for her project, “Matching Care to Need in Dementia Care Transitions: Identifying Patient-Caregiver Profiles and Co-Developing Provider and System Implementation Tools,” continues this work.

Her R01 will focus on developing a profile-based framework for matching transitional care services to distinct caregiving groups that focus on people living with dementia. Her study will enable tailored, evidence-based care by creating workflow templates for embedding transitional care into existing processes, including stakeholder training and usability testing.

Dr. Moss was a 2022 IMPACT Faculty Scholar and is a current member of the Engaging Partners Team. In her work as a faculty scholar, Dr. Moss sought to better understand family caregiver stress. Her recent R01 for “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Peer Support for Family Caregivers of Older Adults Living with Dementia (Pair 2 Care^©)” continues this effort by examining the benefit of Pair 2 Care, a simple nonjudgmental, flexible and potentially scalable peer support program which uses the experiences of trained former family care partners as mentors to current family care partner mentees.