$53.4M grant to Brown, Hebrew SeniorLife to enable massive expansion of Alzheimer’s research

Alzheimer’s is increasingly costly to families and communities across the United States. In Rhode Island, 23,000 people aged 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s and 53,000 family caregivers bear the burden, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The time spent providing care translates to more than $760 million in unpaid work, and the disease has cost the state Medicaid program more than $400 million, the association estimates. Given the prevalence and implications of the disease, news of recent investment to enhance the capacity for research is significant.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has awarded a five-year grant expected to total $53.4 million to Brown University and Boston-based Hebrew SeniorLife (HSL) to lead a nationwide effort to improve health care and quality of life for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, as well as their caregivers.

Together, the institutions will create a massive collaborative research incubator to develop trials aimed at evaluating interventions for Alzheimer’s disease or Alzheimer’s-related dementia.The research center will be called the NIA Imbedded Pragmatic AD/ADRD Clinical Trials Collaboratory, or IMPACT, and will be overseen by the Center for Long-Term Care Quality and Innovation at Brown’s School of Public Health. It will focus primarily on two objectives:

• fund and assist up to 40 pilot trials across the country to test non-drug, care-based interventions for people living with dementia.
• develop best practices for implementing and evaluating interventions for Alzheimer’s and dementia care.

Read more about how Brown University and Hebrew SeniorLife intend to leverage the largest federal grant in the school’s history to facilitate development of pragmatic solutions  HERE.