Meaningful Activities and Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

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Project Abstract/Summary The research proposed for this award offers an outstanding opportunity to meet my career goals of: (1) becoming a leading mentor in geriatrics and palliative care; and (2) to pursue a new direction of research that addresses meaningful activities for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. My currently- supported research includes two R01 awards focused on developing better prognostic models for older adults in general and older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. A central theme of both R01 awards is that older adults care about more than survival, they care about their risk for developing disability and losing their independence. Thus, our prognostic models will be designed to estimate time to death, time to disability, time to difficulty with cognitively demanding daily tasks, and time to nursing home admission. My proposed research leverages these data and intellectual resources for a new research direction, which will explore the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and activities that are important to older adults. This work is an extension of our central theme of focusing on outcomes that matter to older adults other than survival. Older adults care not just about survival and independence in self-care activities, a rather narrow view of the human experience, they care about being able to participate in activities that give their lives meaning and value. Meaningful activities might include attending religious services, reading books, spending time with family, or gardening. Little is known, however, about the relationship between participation in meaningful activities and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. A central premise for this project is that maintaining participation in meaningful activities is essential to quality of life for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. We will use the NHATS-Medicare linked datasets for this research, datasets we already own and use. These datasets will serve as a rich laboratory for a variety of mentored projects. The specific aims of the project are as follows: (1) To ascertain medical and social factors associated with maintaining participation in meaningful activities for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias; and (2) To determine the association between participation in meaningful activities and health outcomes: quality of life, mortality, and healthcare costs over time for older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. To accomplish my career goal of becoming a leading mentor in geriatrics and palliative care, my career development objectives during this award are: (1) to accelerate collaboration with palliative care; (2) to recruit mentees from diverse backgrounds; and (3) to engage in professional leadership development.