DEploying High ValuE LOngitudinal Population-Based dAta in Dementia Research (DEVELOP AD Research)

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PROJECT SUMMARY As the aging pyramid squares, healthcare systems face unprecedented numbers of older adults living with serious chronic illness, escalating costs, and reductions in available caregivers. These challenges are greatly magnified in the setting of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Living with ADRD is characterized by physical and psychosocial suffering, mismatches between patient goals of care and treatments received; high physical, psychological, and financial burdens on families and the health system. This program project, Deploying High Value Longitudinal Population-based data in Dementia Research (DEVELOP AD RESEARCH), breaks new ground by employing rich population-based data to develop a comprehensive longitudinal understanding of dementia that will better inform clinical and policy interventions and improve healthcare for persons with dementia and their families. Methodological constraints have limited the ability to examine the complex longitudinal interplay of medical, social, and system factors known to influence health, healthcare, and quality of life and death for persons with dementia. The need to enroll samples large enough to account for the population’s heterogeneity, the necessity of gathering data from patients and caregivers across diverse care settings, difficulties collecting social determinants of health data due to budgetary and primary data collection effort constraints, and a duration of illness that exceeds standard 5-year grant funding periods have limited the ability to answer important questions. The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) are ongoing NIA funded population-based studies that contain rich longitudinal patient and family health, social, and economic data and, through their linkages to CMS claims, comprehensive information on health service utilization and costs. Due to their maturity, numbers of participants, retention rates, sampling frames, and validated algorithms for identifying dementia, both datasets are now able to provide sufficient sample sizes, variables, and longitudinal follow-up to begin to address existing gaps in dementia research. Marshalling pre- existing resources and highly productive collaborations among project investigators, we break new ground by proposing integrated research that examines the complex longitudinal interplay of medical, social, and system factors known to influence health, healthcare, and quality of life and death for persons with dementia. Our five research projects address major questions in dementia science whose answers demand the use of the population-based data now available through NHATS and/or HRS. Our two resource cores support the complex analytics required of each research project, integrate and coordinate research activities, disseminate findings and data resources including programming code and data dictionaries, create a platform of research to support early-stage investigators, and identify future directions and research collaborations.