Pilot Grant Awardees

Co-Investigators: Emmanuelle Belanger, PhD, Associate Professor, Health Services, Policy and Practice, School of Public Health, Brown University; Jason Gantenberg, PhD, Research Scientist, Center for Evidence Synthesis in Health, School of Public Health, Brown University 

This study will leverage the Community Clinician survey to better understand clinicians use of Alzheimer’s disease biomarker testing and disparities in test access. Investigators will explore how referrals for AD biomarkers vary by clinician- and practice-level attributes, including training, specialization, confidence in diagnosing dementia and MCI, number of patients served, and other factors. This work will lay the groundwork for tracking the use of biomarkers following Medicare's recent approval of amyloid therapies.

Co-Investigator: Pedro Gozalo, PhD, Professor, Health Services, Policy and Practice, School of Public Health, Brown University 

This project will examine how organizational characteristics such as dementia care training, scheduling practices, and compensation impact both staff’s desire to stay in their job and if they do. It will identify which of these elements has the most significant impact on staff’s desire to stay and retention rates. Investigators will also explore how these relationships vary across staff roles including nurses, LPNs, and direct care workers, and how facility-level dementia census impacts staff retention. The study will use available linked data to consider facility-level characteristics, geographic context, and county-level unemployment rates.

Co-Investigators: Pamela Nadash, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston; Edward A. Miller, PhD, Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston

This study will explore variation in the dementia-related training of the long-term care workforce. It will also examine how this training impacts worker well-being and intent to stay using three well-being measures: physical well-being, psychological well-being, and the degree of self-efficacy to perform dementia-specific job tasks. Researchers will also explore how dementia-specific training relates to workers’ exposures to job hazards.

Co-Investigator: Heehyul Moon, PhD, Associate Professor, Kent School of Social Work and Family Science, University of Louisville

This project will investigate the extent to which informal and formal training is associated with dementia care attitudes and practices across long-term care settings, controlling for demographic factors and work-related characteristics. The investigators hope that this research can be used to identify appropriate and cost-effective training strategies to increase job satisfaction, reduce turnover, and enhance the quality of dementia care provided, especially in underserved and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. 

Co-Investigator: Ariel Green, MD, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University

Biostatistician: Vishaldeep Kaur Sekhon, MPH, Senior Biostatistician, Center on Aging and Health, Johns Hopkins University

This study will examine community clinicians’ beliefs and attitudes regarding deprescribing medications and use of psychotropic potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) in patients living with dementia. The study team will identify patient, clinician, and practice-related factors that predict favorable beliefs and attitudes. They will use prescribing data to study predictors of prescribing more than five medications and prescribing psychotropic PIMs. Through this research, they hope to identify new intervention targets and strategies for reducing polypharmacy and PIMs in people living with dementia.

Co-Investigators: Amy Elliott, PhD, Senior Research Scholar, Scripps Gerontology Center, Miami University; Heather Menne, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology & Gerontology, Miami University

This team will examine the relationship between the dementia knowledge and attitudes of nursing home staff and staff turnover, and how both are impacted by facility culture. Previous research has shown that the ability of nursing home staff to turn training into practice is related to the facility’s organizational culture, such as supervisory support and staff empowerment. As part of this work, investigators will develop a composite measure of facility culture and use linked data to examine how culture impacts staff turnover.