An Alzheimer's Disease Research Center
Penn Memory Center researchers and their collaborators will have prominent spots at this year’s Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC), an annual research conference hosted by the Alzheimer’s Association.
International investigators, clinicians, and researchers will come together July 22 to 26 in Chicago to share the latest study results, theories, and discoveries to help bring the world closer to breakthroughs in dementia science.
For someone living with dementia, performing everyday tasks like managing money, cooking, or driving presents a challenge. This challenge is lessened with the help of caregivers.
Caregivers provide intensive support to persons with dementia which can be a 24/7 responsibility that they take-on in addition to their own obligations. Caregivers can be spouses, children, parents, or friends who are helping someone they care about, often times with little thought to how it impacts their own emotional and physical health.
Caregivers experience symptoms of depression and anxiety and have feelings of anger, sadness, and frustration. Becoming a caregiver is a great responsibility and it is important to remember that caregivers need to take care of themselves in order to be able to take care of others.
This is what prompted the creation of the National Research Summit on Care, Services, and Supports for Persons with Dementia and their Caregivers last year. The goal of the summit was to discuss research related to dementia patients and their caregivers to identify what they know and do not know in order to accelerate the development, evaluation, and implementation of comprehensive care, services, and supports for people with dementia, their families, and caregivers.
Penn Memory Center patient Carl Duzen and his wife Susan Jewett were featured on 6abc news channel last week for copper art, which Mr. Duzen creates from taking apart old electronics. This was a hobby he adopted as a coping mechanism after his Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis at PMC a few years ago. What started out as just a hobby of taking apart discarded TVs turned into an art exhibit after Ms. Jewett, who is also an artist, began to frame the work Mr. Duzen created.
Mr. Duzen and Ms. Jewett with PMC Co-Directors Dr. David Wolk and Dr. Jason Karlawish at his exhibition opening. (Terrence Casey / Penn Memory Center)
Mr. Duzen’s copper art is currently featured in PMC’s ‘Art of the Mind’ exhibition. The grand opening was in early May when a group of the couple’s close friends and members of the PMC community gathered to celebrate his work.
“Carl Duzen: Shaping Copper, Making Meaning” will be on display outside the Penn Memory Center clinic until late October. Guests can view the exhibition during regular business hours by entering the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine through the main doors, taking the elevator to the second floor, and following the hallway to the South Pavilion.
Marianne Watson, RN, who has served the Penn Memory Center as senior research nurse since its inception 25 years ago, is retiring in July.
Felicia Greenfield, LCSW, executive director of PMC, made the announcement at the 2018 Research Partner Thank You Luncheon. News of Ms. Watson’s pending departure was met with a mix of saddened cries — “no!” and “don’t go!” — cheers of congratulations, and nostalgia.
Ms. Watson announces her retirement at the PMC Thank You Luncheon. (Terrence Casey / Penn Memory Center)
Penn Memory Center’s July Memory Café will feature Beacon Theatre Productions, who will be putting on an interactive performance of “The Red Letter Locker.” “The Red Letter Locker” is a short play about Arthur Conan Doyle traveling to 2018 through a time machine and ending up in a Philadelphia high school.
Join the Penn Memory Center in welcoming them:
Friday, July 13 | 10:30 a.m. to noon
Christ Church Neighborhood House
20 N. American Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
To RSVP, contact Alison Lynn at 215-360-0257 or alison.lynn@uphs.upenn.edu.
As we age, it is common to occasionally have trouble finding words or experience a lapse in memory. The question is when those lapses become disruptive enough to indicate the need for a doctor’s assessment of our cognitive abilities.
To help individuals distinguish dementia from normal signs of aging, Penn Memory Center Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD cites some common signs that often signify true cognitive decline in his latest article published by AARP.
Dr. Karlawish speaking on money management and cognitive decline at a recent Wharton School event. (Photo by SIFMA.)
Kristin Harkins, MPH
As advances in imaging and other technologies continue to take place, clinicians will have the ability to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD) years before the onset of clinical symptoms. This progress may present difficulties, such as informing cognitively healthy individuals of potentially distressing information.
Kristin Harkins, MPH and Jason Karlawish, MD, both of the Penn Memory Center, provide considerations clinicians must make when disclosing amyloid status to a person without cognitive impairments in an article published to Practical Neurology.
Riddhi Patira, MD
Every 70 seconds, someone in America is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Two Penn Memory Center clinicians have a published set of recommendations regarding the care that follows.
Riddhi Patira, MD and Sanjeev Vaishnavi, MD, PhD discuss the “epidemic proportions” AD is reaching, with no effective therapies to prevent onset or stop disease progression, in a recent article published to the journal Practical Neurology.
Shana Stites, PsyD, MS, MA
The stigma associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) often presents patients and their families with psychological and social challenges. Penn Memory Center provides steps clinicians can take to minimize this stigma in a paper published to Practical Neurology.
PMC Scholar Shana D. Stites, PsyD, MS, MA and PMC Co-Director Jason Karlawish, MD describe stigma’s consequences on both how a patient and caregiver react to a diagnosis (“internalized stigma”) and how the community treats the diagnosed in discriminatory or patronizing ways (“public stigma”). Additionally, a third type of stigma called “spillover stigma” can affect caregivers and family members who become associated with presumed negative societal traits.
Penn Memory Center neurologist Sanjeev Vaishnavi, MD, PhD recently visited senior living and memory care center Atria Center City, where he presented the talk “Dementia: Getting a Proper Diagnosis.”
Atria Center City is sponsoring PMC’s November Caregiver Retreat, and part of this sponsorship includes a presentation from a PMC dementia specialist.
