The University of Wisconsin launches new center to test and implement dementia care interventions

Two women are having a conversation while looking down at something out of view

Nearly seven million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer’s and related diseases (ADRD), according to the Alzheimer’s Association—a number that has more than doubled in the last 20 years. While funding and support to advance the science of dementia care has increased substantially, care innovations still need to be successfully implemented outside of healthcare organizations and test cases that are difficult to replicate.

To address the issue, a multidisciplinary group of leaders in dementia care research recently launched the Establishing Mechanisms of Benefit to Reinforce the Alzheimer’s Care Experience (EMBRACE) AD/ADRD Roybal Center .

Andrea Gilmore-Bykovksyi (left) and Joseph Gaugler

Co-directing the new center is Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi, PhD, RN, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Joseph Gaugler, PhD, University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Joining a nationwide network of 15 Roybal Centers, the EMBRACE Center’s first major studies will be supported by a robust network of mentors, including leading researchers in dementia care science at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.

The EMBRACE Center is supported by a five-year, $5.8 million grant from the National Institute on Aging. It will fund and support at least six clinical trials rigorously evaluating complex, individualized dementia care interventions. The center’s goal is to advance research capacity for “mechanism-driven” dementia care interventions—an approach to testing interventions that specifically identifies why dementia care interventions work. This information is critical to scale interventions into home and community settings.

The center will guide progress in scaling dementia care by focusing on a specific action, benefit or behavioral change that is the key to its success. Once this crucial factor is identified, the intervention will be tailored and tested to work within different settings or communities. For example, Manka Nkimbeng, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, will lead one of the trials in the grant’s first year, which focuses on cognitive behavioral support for family members caring for those with dementia and tailors it to people in the African immigrant community.

The new EMBRACE Roybal Center will focus on identifying and testing what makes dementia interventions work to adapt them successfully in a variety of care settings.

“Academia plays a crucial role in advancing dementia care by driving research that deepens our understanding of the disease,” says Gilmore-Bykovskyi, associate vice chair of research and associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Wisconsin.

“The challenge has been making sure that the promising interventions developed in these studies reach the people who need them most—the EMBRACE Center aims to help bridge that gap. By testing how dementia care interventions work in real-world settings, the center will speed up the process of turning scientific breakthroughs into practical solutions that can readily improve the lives of those living with dementia and their caregivers.”

The EMBRACE Center will provide consultation, resources and support to investigators who wish to progress towards larger scale and more rigorous testing of their trials. The center will also offer educational resources, workshops, and opportunities for researchers to advance the science of dementia care to close the gap between academic research and real-world, scalable interventions to support the millions of Americans living with ADRD and those who care for them.

EMBRACE funding applications are now open. Funding will support one- to two-year clinical trials that test mechanisms of action for tailored home- and community-based dementia care interventions. Submissions are due by November 20, 2024, at 5 p.m. CT. Learn more at embraceroybal.wisc.edu .
 


This project is funded by NIH grant P30AG086642. The content of this news release is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.