Establishing Mechanisms of Benefit to Reinforce the Alzheimer's Care Experience AD/ADRD Roybal Center: EMBRACE

Program Summary/Abstract-Overall With the advent of the National Alzheimer’s Project Act of 2011, funding and support to advance the science of dementia care has increased substantially. There now exists significant research infrastructure to support basic research on dementia care, intervention development and testing, and the integration of

dementia care interventions into healthcare systems. However, if the science of dementia care is to progress towards the later stages of the NIH Stage Model, the development of scalable innovations that are more readily disseminated and primed for implementation across settings (including homes and within community

organizations) is needed. One way to do so is to better understand why dementia care interventions work. The primary objective of the Establishing Mechanisms of Benefit to Reinforce the Alzheimer’s Care Experience AD/ADRD Roybal Center (EMBRACE) is to provide scientific infrastructure to support the

testing of mechanisms in tailored home and community dementia care intervention trials across Stages 0-V of the NIH Stage Model. The Aims of EMBRACE are as follows: 1) Leverage the extensive expertise of EMBRACE to attract and support early stage to expert Investigators to test mechanistically driven

dementia care interventions across the NIH Stage Model; 2) Advance the science of testing mechanisms of tailored dementia care interventions in home and community settings; and 3) Conduct a robust evaluation of EMBRACE to ensure appropriate progress of supported trials. The science of dementia care interventions is at a crossroads. Despite significant infrastructure

investments on the part of the National Institute on Aging and other federal agencies, very few Stage I-III trials have successfully progressed to subsequent effectiveness (Stage IV) and dissemination and implementation (Stage V) testing in the NIH Stage Model. By relying on its national network of collaboration between the

University of Minnesota (Multiple Principal Investigator/MPI: Gaugler), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (MPI Gilmore-Bykovskyi), and the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory (Behavioral Intervention Development Core Co- Leads Hodgson and Gitlin well as six EMBRACE faculty), the proposed AD/ADRD Roybal Center will provide

unparalleled consultation and support throughout the lifecycle of intervention development and create academic, scientific, and educational resources to guide the testing of mechanisms in dementia care interventions across the NIH Stage Model.