Latest News

Are you one of the 15.5 million caregivers in the U.S.? This month we thank you as part of #NationalFamilyCaregiversMonth. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Aging also recognizes your commitment to helping others. Take a look at the video they produced featuring caregivers from the #PennMemoryCenter community.

In the October 2014 issue of Medical Ethics Advisor, Jason Karlawish, MD, associate director of the Penn Memory Center, discusses the ethical concerns of preclinical detection of Alzheimer’s disease. “We operationalize our ethic of autonomy through our brain,” Dr. Karlawish says in the article.“So as we talk about labeling people’s brain at risk of decline before they are ill, we are playing with very hot ethical and social issues.”

You can read the article here.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is leading a study on the impact of the Music and Memory Program, a music program aimed at helping dementia patients. Researchers are studying 1,500 Alzheimer’s and dementia patients who were given iPods at Wisconsin nursing homes through the program. They hope to determine whether music improves mood and behavior, which residents might benefit and then tailor activities accordingly. You can read more here.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Prevention Research Center has been awarded two grants from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to advance the CDC’s Healthy Brain Initiative. Penn’s Prevention Research Center, directed by Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH, and Kevin Volpp, MD PhD, conducts innovative public health and disease research aimed at preventing chronic disease and reducing health disparities in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It is one of 26 CDC-supported Prevention Research Centers in the nation.

The “Healthy Brain Initiative Network Collaborating Center” will be led by Jason Karlawish, MD, associate director of the Penn Memory Center and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center’s Outreach, Recruitment and Education Core; and Amy Jordan, PhD, co-director of Penn PRC’s Communications and Dissemination Core. “Public Health Communications: Culturally Relevant Messages and Strategies to Promote Awareness about Dementia, including Alzheimer’s Disease” is a collaboration between Drs. Karlawish and Jordan to develop messages and a communication strategy to  promote brain health and awareness about Alzheimer’s disease.

“We are thrilled that the CDC selected our proposals for funding,” said Dr. Karlawish.  “The Healthy Brain Initiative is an important national effort to promote brain health for older Americans. These awards are a great opportunity for the Philadelphia region and Pennsylvania. They will connect the many smart, talented and motivated leaders in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania with a national effort to promote brain health.”

The goals of the Healthy Brain Initiative Network Collaborating Center are to participate in the Network’s efforts to establish and advance a research and service agenda in cognitive health and healthy brain aging, and support doctoral and postdoctoral education and training in cognitive health and healthy aging. The Center will develop a course “The public health implications of cognitive aging” for the masters in public health program, a certificate program in the Masters in Public Health program, and the “Healthy Brain Initiative Scholars,” for doctoral and post-doctoral students whose research focuses on cognitive health, cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

The Center’s Advisory Board includes leaders in Alzheimer’s disease, aging, and research and health care services for older adults.  The members include Brian Duke, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Aging; Wendy Campbell, President and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Delaware Valley Chapter; Holly Lange, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging; and Tinesha Banks, Deputy Executive Director of the Health Promotion Council.

“Public Health Communications: Culturally Relevant Messages and Strategies to Promote Awareness about Dementia, including Alzheimer’s Disease” is a collaboration between Dr. Karlawish and Dr. Jordan that will identify key issues related to communicating about cognitive health and Alzheimer’s disease. As part of this project, the investigators will design and develop public health messages focused on promoting cognitively healthy behaviors. Messages will be relevant for the two most common ethnic groups in the Philadelphia area, African Americans and non-Latino Whites.

Dr. Jordan, Associate Director of Policy Implementation for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has a wealth of experience developing and disseminating public health messages. She explains that “effective messaging to promote healthy behaviors must be done with a solid framework of evidence that supports the targeted behavior and the messages people see. With the support of the CDC, we will be part of a national effort to begin this for brain health. This is a great opportunity to have a national impact.”

These grants are part of the CDC’s Healthy Brain Initiative, inaugurated in 2005, that addresses the public health challenges of cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease. The goals of the Initiative’s Road Map for State and National Partnerships, 2013-2018 include developing and disseminating culturally relevant public health messaging about brain health and Alzheimer’s disease.

A total of $12.3 million was awarded to 21 Prevention Research Centers for 56 Special Interest Projects to design, test, and disseminate effective applied public health prevention research strategies. The UPenn Prevention Research Center received 4 awards.  To view a complete list of the 2014 awards, click here.

Darina Petrovsky, a predoctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and the leader of the Penn Memory Center Choral Group, spoke to WRTI Radio (90.1 FM) about the benefits of singing as a group, including developing new friendships and reducing stress.

You can listen to her interview here, and also hear clips from the group’s performance in May at the Watermark at Logan Square.

Do you know someone who is interested in joining the group? Our fall session is just beginning. Please contact barbara.overholser@uphs.upenn.edu for more information.

Two years ago, at a conference in Miami on Alzheimer’s disease, after a session about risk factors and biomarker prediction models, a colleague remarked to Jason Karlawish, M.D., how the singer Leonard Cohen has been saying onstage that when he turns 80, he will resume smoking. As he pondered that comment, Alzheimer’s biomarkers and our zeal to foresee our future, Dr. Karlawish began to think of an essay to take on the question, “When should we set aside a life lived for the future and, instead, embrace the pleasures of the present?”

In the current issue of The Pennsylvania Gazette you’ll find Penn Memory Center‘s Dr. Jason Karlawish’s review of Nobel Prize winning researcher Stanley Prusiner’s memoir, “Madness and Memory: The Discovery of Prions—A New Biological Principle of Disease.”  The memior traces Prusiner’s journey from his Midwestern boyhood to his 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for his work determining prions as among the causes of neurological diseases.. Prusiner is now director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco.

In the review, Dr. Karlawish asks, “In the life of the scientist, is there life outside of science?”

You can read the review here.

Starting in 2015, Medicare will pay monthly fees to doctors who manage care for patients with two or more chronic conditions. This is a policy change initiated by the Obama administration.

In an interview in the New York Times, Marilyn B. Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said, “Paying separately for chronic care management services is a significant policy change.”  The article noted that care coordination could pay for itself by keeping patients healthier and out of hospitals.

“This is great news for our patients at the Penn Memory Center,” says Jason Karlawish, MD, Associate Director of the Penn Memory Center.

“Persons with Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive disorders typically have other common medical illnesses as well. Taking care of them requires organizing and coordinating information, and communication among disciplines and the patient’s family. It’s a rewarding part of practicing medicine but it’s time intensive.”

You can read the New York Times article here.

A study published in JAMA Neurology on August 11, 2014, suggests that minimizing apoE gene levels in the brain may be an approach to developing a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. In the study, researchers found that a man with no apolipoprotein E, or apoE, in his body was cognitively normal and showed no neurological signs of Alzheimer’s. Those with a mutation of the gene called apoE4 have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. You can read the study here.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on ARTZ Philadelphia’s programming for people with dementia, and the organization’s relationship with the Penn Memory Center. The organization’s goal is to serve, through arts and culture, people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The Penn Memory Center is working closely with the organization to spread the word about its museum tours and arts activities. You can read the Philadelphia Inquirer article here.