From Policies to pTau: Exposing Social and Structural Drivers of Alzheimer’s Disease and Opportunities for Brain Health Justice
Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging | to
Jennifer J. Manly, Ph.D.
Professor of Neuropsychology (in Neurology, the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center and the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain)
Columbia University
Jennifer J. Manly, PhD is a Professor of Neuropsychology in Neurology at the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center and the Taub Institute for Research in Aging and Alzheimer’s disease at Columbia University. Her research focuses on mechanisms of inequalities in cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her research team has partnered with the Black and Latinx communities in New York City and around the United States to design and carry out investigations of structural and social forces across the lifecourse, such as educational opportunities, discrimination, and socioeconomic inequality, and how these factors relate to cognition and brain health later in life. She is the MPI of the Columbia Interdisciplinary Research Center on Alzheimer’s Disparities which focuses on mentoring early career scientists from minoritized backgrounds. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Alzheimer’s Association, and she has authored over 220 peer-reviewed publications and 10 chapters. She was the 2014 recipient of the Tony Wong Diversity Award for Outstanding Mentorship, was the recipient of the Paul Satz-International Neuropsychological Society Career Mentoring Award in 2020, and was named the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research Senior Mentor of the Year in 2022. Dr. Manly was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021. She served on the HHS Advisory Council on Alzheimer's Research, Care and Services from 2011 – 2015 and is a current member of the National Advisory Council on Aging.
Summary
https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=53831
Social and structural determinants of health are increasingly recognized as important contributors to Alzheimer’s Disease risk and progression. Dr. Manly will discuss research that establishes connections between upstream institutional and social inequalities, including those reinforced by structural racism, and downstream disparities in ADRD biomarkers and cognitive decline. This research also reveals potential sources of resilience to neuropathology, and forms the basis for advocating for brain health justice and developing interventions to reduce ADRD risk.
Learning Objectives:
1) To identify methods to determine causal relationships between structural and social forces across the lifecourse and disparities in Alzheimer's disease and later life cognitive decline.
2) To learn how integration of biomarkers of neuropathology in population representative studies informs our understanding of mechanisms that link contextual exposures to ADRD.
3) To describe why a brain health justice framework is fundamental to innovation in our field.
This page was last updated on Thursday, April 18, 2024