School Quality and Racial Disparities in Alzheimer's Disease in Project Talent

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The American Institutes for Research (AIR) will provide staff for the School Quality and Racial Disparities in Alzheimer’s Disease in Project Talent study and will assist Dr. Jennifer Manly (PI, Columbia University) in activities to create shared data resources and to support all aspects of this research project. Socioeconomic adversity in early life is a risk factor for poor brain health—impaired cognitive function and cerebrovascular disease—in later life, but some individuals are resilient, achieving better-than-expected outcomes despite facing early life adversity. The mechanisms of resilience, as well as the causal pathways between early life adversity and later life brain health, are unclear, but educational experiences are very likely critical. This project will focus on mortality, cognitive function, and cardiovascular health conditions that increase risk for cerebrovascular disease, all outcomes that have been linked to early life socioeconomic adversity, and will evaluate the role of educational experiences in potentially promoting resilience to early life adversity. A central research question in our evaluation of school quality and long term impacts on brain health is whether there are racial/ethnic differences in the benefits of attending higher quality schools or the mechanisms though which education influences later health. The study will include ~9000 participants, currently aged 69-74, to assess cognitive abilities, health, and other aspects of resilience. Other innovations of this study include: a contemporary battery of cognitive abilities measures harmonized with several of the original 1960 measures, allowing direct measurement of change across 1960 to 2017 on multiple cognitive abilities; use of adaptive testing to reduce participant burden; and assessment via mailed tablet computers to facilitate measurement of memory and visuospatial abilities. This study has many advantages, including its sample size, prospective design, high quality measurement of multiple cognitive abilities in adolescence and older adulthood, assessment of educational quality and experiences, cognitive complexity of occupational and leisure activities, all in the context of its unique design that provides an unprecedented opportunity to address causal hypotheses.