A National Institute on Aging-designated Alzheimer's Disease Center
The Penn Memory Center team says goodbye and good luck to the latest corps of social work students, who have successfully completed their internships.
Sarah Bujno, Nora Garland, Laura Vargas, and Matt Volpe helped develop and maintain psychosocial support programs for patients and caregivers at PMC since the beginning of the academic year. Their last day is May 1, 2019.
Older adults susceptible to financial scams may have a greater chance of developing cognitive impairment, according to a study published April 16 ($) in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The research, conducted at the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, involved 935 older adults who did not have dementia. They were assessed for “scam awareness” by rating their agreement to statements using a 7-point scale. There were five statements:
The National Alzheimer’s and Dementia Resource Center is hosting a webinar series, sponsored by the Administration for Community Living. A presentation, titled “The Messages We Send: Stigma Toward Persons Living with Dementia and How to End It,” will be led by Penn Memory Center scholar Shana Stites, PsyD, MA, MS and Rev. Cynthia Huling Hummel, D.Min., who is living with early stage dementia.
Webinar participants will be able to:
The presentation is on Tuesday, May 7 at 2 p.m. ET. It’s free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Penn Memory Center (PMC) Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD, and PMC Scholar Cara Fallon, PhD, MPH, presented at the 2019 Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias (ADRD) Summit.
The duo gave an 11-minute talk titled, “Stigma: Considerations of Ethics and History.” Karlawish kicked off the conversation by informing the audience of their goal: “to help understand how stigma is embodied in nomenclature.”
He went on to detail that stigma is “both a mark and a process” and has three types: self-stigma (internalized stigma), public stigma (externalized/enacted stigma), and spillover stigma (stigma by association). He also discussed the ethical implications of stigma.
Fallon, a historian, then took the mic and educated the audience about the history of terms used for intellectual and development disabilities in the U.S.
Karlawish and Fallon acknowledge that a change in words alone will not end stigma. Rather, beliefs and attitudes need to change. The language will “both lead and follow,” he said.
To view a video of the first day of the summit, click here. Karlawish and Fallon’s presentation begins at 6:31:37.
The ADRD Summit took place March 14-15, 2019 at the Natcher Auditorium on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland and was sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
A group of young scientists in Minnesota recently welcomed Penn Memory Center Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD, into their classroom.
High school students in the Shattuck-St. Mary’s School bioscience enrichment program have been reading Karlawish’s 2011 historical novel Open Wound to enrich their study of the digestive system. Program Director Maren LaLiberty, MD, invited Karlawish to Skype in with the classroom before the students finished the book.
“There are certain aspects of anatomy and physiology that can really only be illuminated by stories,” LaLiberty said.
A newly published study found that positron emission tomography (PET) scans used to detect plaques related to Alzheimer’s disease may influence the care and diagnoses received by patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia.
More specifically, the results of the research showed that in about two-thirds of cases, clinicians who received information from their patients’ PET scans went on to change medical management regarding medications or counseling within 90 days.
The participant pool included 11,409 men and women from across the nation living with MCI or dementia of an uncertain cause. They were an average age of 75, and were all Medicare beneficiaries. Participants came from a multisite, longitudinal study known as the Imaging Dementia—Evidence for Amyloid Scanning (IDEAS) study.
As biomarkers have taken on a larger role in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, even before the onset of symptoms such as cognitive decline, researchers have debated how to label these “pre-clinical” patients.
The evolution of diagnosis also creates a new role for the loved ones of these patients, those who may someday need to care for a patient living with dementia. This, argued two Penn Memory Center (PMC) researchers, is “the dawn of the pre-caregiver.”
In a March 2019 JAMA Neurology article, PMC Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD, and PMC Scholar Emily Largent, PhD, JD, RN, discussed how the pre-clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, in conjunction with new laws, will lead to earlier engagement of family members in care.
In honor of National Healthcare Decisions Day (4/16), VITAS Healthcare is hosting two FREE workshops to assist with advance care planning:
The workshops are for anyone in the community over the age of 18, but especially seniors, who don’t yet have a living will (also known as an advance directive). Attendees will play a game called “My Gift of Grace” (or “Hello”) which is about living and dying well. After a brief refreshments break, attendees will dig into the Five Wishes format for advance care planning. For more information, click here.
Space is limited. RSVP by April 15 to Sara Burns at Sara.Burns@VITAS.com.
On Friday morning, members of the Penn Medicine Geriatrics and Penn Memory Center teams, met American Geriatrics Society (AGS) leaders to learn more about the vision of age-friendly health systems (AFHS).
In these systems, said Annette Medina-Walpole, MD, older adults get the best care possible, experience no harm from their care, and are satisfied with the care they receive. The value of this system is optimized for not only patients, families, and caregivers, but also health care providers. Dr. Medina-Walpole is chief of geriatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center and an AGS board member.
The AFHS plan aligns with several goals of the Penn Memory Center, namely cutting back on older adults’ unnecessary prescriptions, considering a patient’s personal care preferences and goals, and preventing and managing dementia, depression, and delirium.
At the Penn Memory Center and Alzheimer’s disease research centers across the nation, research participants are essential to those studying neurodegenerative diseases and lifelong brain health. Without them, there could be no research.
Equally essential, though less obvious, is the study partner.
A study partner is someone who accompanies a participant to Alzheimer’s disease research visits and knows the participant well. Though this is frequently a spouse or adult child, it could easily be a friend, neighbor, or sibling-in-law who sees the participant often enough to accurately report on how the participant’s cognition and function is in their home environment.
Enrolling dyads — a participant and study partner — is often extraordinarily challenging, for a variety of reasons. But in order to advance Alzheimer’s research and get closer to the goal of treating and preventing the disease by 2025, as set forth by global leaders in the National Plan, it’s imperative to understand the challenges and barriers of study partner participation.