South Texas Alzheimer's Disease Center Research and Education Core

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The cost of dementia care in the US will be $1 Trillion by 2050. Moreover, this burden will be highest among minorities, a group that is itself diverse. The Hispanic/Latino population of South Texas, comprised of persons of Mexican American ancestry, is the nation’s fastest growing minority but is woefully under-represented in ADRD research. Reaching and studying this population requires a culturally attuned, highly skilled cohort of researchers and clinicians who recognize that dementia in this group is likely to have different genetic, social, environmental and behavioral risk and resilience factors, heterogenous biology (e.g. greater vascular/metabolic contributions) and care needs (e.g. higher caregiver burden). Expanding the research and clinical workforce will necessitate attracting the brightest minds from related disciplines to dementia research. It also requires being able to recruit, retain and support the career growth of fellows and faculty, with diverse race-, ethnic-, social backgrounds, providing additional, targeted support for promising women and under-represented minority researchers who may lack access to mentoring networks or key information. The Research Education Core (REC) of the STAC, will be a leader in achieving this and sharing our insights nationally. The REC is led by Profs. Cavazos, Maestre and Mahaney who each have deep roots in the Hispanic community and South Texas, a superb track record of successful NIH and VA funding and of academic mentoring especially minority (Hispanic) MD and MD/PhD researchers. They will be supported by other outstanding senior faculty and an impressive cadre of emerging mentors. The REC will offer a 12 credit- hour Graduate Certificate on Dementia and developmental grants to introduce a wide range of health professionals to issues in dementia research. The flagship program of our REC will be to identify and support 9 outstanding faculty candidates, through 2- year K type awards that include a mentored research experience, strong career guidance and culminate in external research funding. Our goal is to grow thought leaders in ADRD research. We propose these Specific Aims: 1) Grow a cadre of researchers representing and/or focusing on all aspects of Hispanic health 2) Broad training across clinical, laboratory, imaging, computational, omics, epidemiology, biostatistics, social science and community engagement domains 3) Emphasis on training clinician, basic and population science researchers to become independent investigators skilled in T1 and T2 translation, team science and mentoring 4) Emphasis on instruction in cutting-edge technologies and analysis methods with a focus on precision medicine approaches and optimal, community and person centered prevention and care. We will carefully evaluate program effectiveness and adjust accordingly. UTHSA and UTRGV are national leaders in Hispanic education and recruitment and the STAC REC will leverage the rich local training environment (AD-RCMAR, CTSI, Pepper, Nathan Shock, GRECC, military research/researchers) to grow superb ADRD researchers.