HCAP Network Seminar Series: Lindsay Kobayashi

Cross-national comparisons of cognitive aging using the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol Lindsay C. Kobayashi, PhD Associate Professor of Epidemiology Associate Professor of Global Public Health Co-Director, HCAP International Network University of Michigan School of Public Health Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/95490812541 You are invited to attend the new bimonthly seminar series sponsored by the HCAP Network. The […]

Cross-national comparisons of cognitive aging using the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol

Lindsay C. Kobayashi, PhD
Associate Professor of Epidemiology
Associate Professor of Global Public Health
Co-Director, HCAP International Network
University of Michigan School of Public Health

Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/95490812541

You are invited to attend the new bimonthly seminar series sponsored by the HCAP Network. The series will feature research works that are in progress to foster discussion and build collaborations and learning across the network. We especially hope to feature early-career and trainee researchers working with HCAP studies across the network.

Seminars will be held via Zoom bimonthly on the final Tuesday of the month from 11am-12pm EST. Our initial seminars will be held on Nov 26th, Jan 28th, Mar 25th, and May 27th.

Please distribute this announcement to your professional networks!

***If you are interested in attending or presenting, please click here to add your name to our email list.

logo signature for Coordinating Center for the Centers of the Demography & Economics of Aging and Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Related Dementias

Featuring:

Tyson H. Brown, Ph.D., Duke University
Advancing Aging Health Equity through Novel Measures and Models of State-Level Structural Racism: Challenges and Opportunities
and
Jennifer Karas Montez, Ph.D., Syracuse University
U.S. State Policy Contexts and Population Health

Register here

This webinar will be hosted by the Coordinating Center for the Centers on the Demography and Economics of Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias.

Presentation abstracts and information

Advancing Aging Health Equity through Novel Measures and Models of State-Level Structural Racism: Challenges and Opportunities

Tyson H. Brown, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Associate Professor in Medicine
Associate Scientific Director of Social Sciences, Duke Aging Center
Duke University

The upcoming talk will focus on innovative and best practices for measuring and modeling state-level structural racism to advance aging health research. It will highlight the importance of developing rigorous, theory-driven tools that capture the interconnected and dynamic nature of structural racism at the state level. By examining state policies, systems, and collective logics that drive racial inequities, the presentation will explore how these factors impact aging health outcomes. Special attention will be given to addressing the limitations of current measures, offering interdisciplinary strategies to ensure that measurement tools align with the core features of structural racism. The talk will also integrate life course principles to underscore how state-level racism influences health trajectories over time, advocating for more robust, evidence-based approaches to deepen understanding in this critical area of public health.

U.S. State Policy Contexts and Population Health

Jennifer Karas Montez, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies
Director, Center for Aging and Policy Studies
Co-Director of the Policy, Place, and Population Health Lab
Syracuse University

U.S. states have always had a decisive role in shaping the day-to-day lives of individuals. This role appears to have increased since the 1980s, with potentially profound consequences for population health. This presentation will summarize findings from recent studies that have connected the dots between changes in states’ policy contexts in recent decades and changes in population health. The presentation will also highlight new directions in this area of research, including examining the joint impact of state policy contexts and local economic conditions.

CAPS Texas Center on Aging and Population Sciences Presenter: Melissa Lamar, Clinical Neuropsychologist, Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center

Lunch (Cabo Bob’s) at 11:30 a.m.
Seminar will start at 12 p.m.
In-person in RLP 1.302E
And via Zoom https://utexas.zoom.us/j/95565978641

Abstract:

Describe how several traditional risk factors for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s dementia in non-Latino Whites do not manifest the same level of risk in Latinos.
Define newer theories of acculturation, particularly, acculturation in context as a framework for investigating brain aging in older Latinos.
Discuss the literature surrounding acculturation in context and cognitive and brain aging in Latinos

Bio: Melissa Lamar, PhD, is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Rush University Medical Center, and a Clinical Neuropsychologist within the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center. She received her PhD in Clinical Neuropsychology from Drexel University and completed her postdoctoral training in Cognitive Neuroscience within the Intramural program of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. She worked at the Institute of Psychiatry King’s College London and the University of Illinois at Chicago prior to joining the Rush faculty in 2016. Her research focuses on modifiable risk and resilience factors as they relate to cognitive and brain aging in older Latino and Black/African American adults. Dr. Lamar employs novel geospatial and neuroimaging approaches and incorporates digital technology into her work with the overarching goal of reducing health disparities and increasing health equity. Dr. Lamar has published extensively, is the PI of several NIH grants, and has received numerous honors and awards for her work including Fellows status of the American Psychological Association and the Arthur Benton Award for Mid-Career Research from the International Neuropsychological Society.

Dr. Amelia Karraker will discuss upcoming NIA funding opportunities and other topics related to NIA grant funding, including applying for funding, the review process, etc. In advance of the Webinar, if you wish to ask your top question please fill out this google form and Dr. Karraker will attempt to target the talk to the needs of our Network.

Melissa Armstrong, MD, MSc, FAAN
University of Florida
Director, Mangurian Clinical-Research Headquarters for Lewy Body Dementia

Virtual only: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/99182005227

Bio: Melissa Armstrong, MD, MSc, FAAN is a Professor of Neurology and the Director of the Mangurian Clinical-Research Headquarters for Lewy Body Dementia at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at the University of Florida. As a clinician, she sees patients with various conditions in the Parkinson family, such as Parkinson disease and Lewy body dementia, and conducts research on these conditions at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on investigating causes and outcomes of hospitalization in Lewy body dementia; studying how clinicians, individuals with memory problems, and caregivers discuss a diagnosis of dementia; finding better ways to diagnose and treat dementia with Lewy bodies; identifying the clinical and research priorities of people living with dementia with Lewy bodies and their caregivers; and learning more about the moderate-advanced stages of dementia with Lewy bodies. Dr. Armstrong has published extensively, is the PI of several grants with funding from various sources, including the NIH and Florida Department of Public Health, and has received numerous honors and awards for her work including a Faculty Clinical Research Award from the University of Florida Department of Neurology and American Academy of Neurology Emerging Leader Award.

Medicare is considering changes to an important program meant to provide beneficiaries with access to newly approved drugs and devices while collecting data on how they work in the real world. The nearly 20-year-old program, known as Coverage with Evidence Development (CED), has recently faced questions about whether it’s working as intended.

Join the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, in partnership with the Tufts Center for Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health and the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, for a conversation on the future of CED at USC’s Capital Campus in Washington, D.C. Attendees will hear from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officials, learn about the latest research and share ideas on how CED could be improved.

Attend Virtually

Social, Behavioral, & Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC) Webinar
Join the Zoom meeting here.

Abstract:
Among the numerous explanations that have been offered for recent errors in survey estimates of COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates and pre-election polling, non-ignorable selection bias, where the probability of responding to a survey is a function of the measure of interest (even after conditioning on other relevant covariates often used for weighting adjustments), has received relatively less focus in the academic literature. Under this type of selection mechanism, estimates of proportions may be subject to significant bias, even after standard weighting adjustments. Until recently, methods for measuring and adjusting for this type of non-ignorable selection bias have been unavailable. Fortunately, recent developments in the methodological literature have provided researchers with easy-to-use measures of non-ignorable selection bias. In this study, we apply a new measure that has been developed specifically for estimated proportions to this challenging problem. We analyze data from the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey and 18 different pre-election polls (nine different telephone polls conducted in eight different states prior to the U.S. Presidential election in 2020, and nine different pre-election polls conducted either online or via telephone in Great Britain prior to the 2015 General Election). We rigorously evaluate the ability of this new measure to detect and adjust for selection bias in estimates of the proportion of individuals receiving COVID-19 vaccinations and the proportion of likely voters that will vote for a specific candidate, using official outcomes from the CDC and each election as benchmarks and alternative data sources for estimating key characteristics of the populations of interest in each context.

Speaker bio:
Brady T. West is a Research Professor in the Survey Methodology Program, located within the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research on the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (U-M) campus. He earned his PhD from the Michigan Program in Survey and Data Science in 2011. Before that, he received an MA in Applied Statistics from the U-M Statistics Department in 2002, being recognized as an Outstanding First-year Applied Masters student, and a BS in Statistics with Highest Honors and Highest Distinction from the U-M Statistics Department in 2001. His current research interests include the implications of measurement error in auxiliary variables and survey paradata for survey estimation, selection bias in surveys, responsive/adaptive survey design, interviewer effects, and multilevel regression models for clustered and longitudinal data.

Join us on May 17 at 1:00 pm EDT for a webinar sponsored by the Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA)’s TRENDS Network highlighting trends in dementia and dementia care.

Registration now open!

The webinar will feature two analyses based on the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) and National Study of Caregiving (NSOC):

Yeunkyung Kim, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and colleagues will present their work: Trend in Respite Use by Race Among Caregivers for People Living with Dementia.

Vicki Freedman, University of Michigan, will present her work with Jennifer Cornman: Dementia Prevalence, Incidence and Mortality Trends Among US Adults Age 72 and Older, 2011-2021.

A panel discussion will immediately follow the presentations.

Please share this announcement widely.

Wednesday, May 1st, 2024
9:00 am – 12:10 pm CDT
Breakfast at 8:30 am and Lunch at 12:10 pm

In-Person at UT Austin
Virtual via Zoom

Full Program | Register Here

Texas Aging & Longevity Consortium, UT Texas

Memory and the Brain Across the Adult Lifespan in Under-Represented Populations

Presenter: Audrey Duarte, Professor, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin

When:
March 29, 2024, 1:15 PM – 2:15 PM CT

Zoom: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/95475432425

Please register here.

About the event

The Texas Aging & Longevity Consortium presents the annual UT Excellence in Research on Aging Award. This lecture will be presented by the award winner, Dr. Audrey Duarte, who is world renowned for her research on neural mechanisms of age-related changes. The public is invited to learn more about this topic.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center on Aging and Population Sciences (CAPS) with funding also provided by the generous support of St. David’s HealthCare and the David and Cindy Eigen Family.

Dr. Audrey Duarte is a cognitive neuroscientist who uses multiple, complementary neuroscience methods including electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and neuropsychological methods (i.e. neurological patients), to understand the neural mechanisms of age-related changes in episodic memory, which is memory for personally experienced events. The major aim of her research program is to understand the neural changes that underlie age-related decline in episodic memory, why some people age better, from a neural and cognitive perspective, than others, and to develop and implement effective interventions to alleviate this decline. She has longstanding and active interdisciplinary collaborations with neurologists, neuropsychologists, and sleep disorder clinicians, and with mechanical engineers, to investigate experimental manipulations that may ameliorate episodic memory impairments in people with Alzheimer’s disease pathology, and to explore sleep-related biomarkers of Alzheimer’s pathology. She has a particular interest in the cognitive neuroscience of aging in racial/ethnic minorities and the psychosocial factors like race-related stress, depression, and acculturation that influence memory and underlying brain function in diverse populations. Her lab’s work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Science Daily, and Ozy.