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Mary Ganguli, MD, MPH (Professor of Psychiatry, Epidemiology, and Neurology), has worked for more than 35 years  on the epidemiology of the aging brain and late-life mental disorders. In two studies recently published in Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders, members of Dr. Ganguli’s team reported on effective strategies to recruit diverse study participants, as well as the results from an investigation of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with mild cognitive impairment in different ethnoracial groups.

Recruitment of a Diverse Community-based Older Adult Cohort for a Longitudinal Aging Study - The 15104 Seniors Project

Since 2006, Dr. Ganguli and her collaborators have been conducting the Monongahela-Youghiogheny Healthy Aging Team (MYHAT), a longitudinal study on aging and cognition, recruiting participants from an under-resourced former steel-manufacturing area of southwestern Pennsylvania. The older adults they have recruited are largely representative of the target population, excepting the disproportionately small number of recruited Black participants compared with the Allegheny County population as a whole. 

Despite having higher incidence and prevalence of Alzheimer disease and related dementias in the United States, Black and African Americans are vastly underrepresented in aging and dementia research. In 2019, Dr. Ganguli’s team sought to diversify the participants recruited to MYHAT, and established the 15104 Seniors Project, aiming to increase the diversity of a cohort of older adults from the MYHAT area, but restricted to the 15104 ZIP code. In a recently published paper led by Erin Jacobsen, MS, they  described a four-year intensive community engagement approach, encompassing a range of strategies—community engagement activities, continuous relationship-building, and heavy advertising through print material and individual word-of-mouth—that has resulted in the recruitment of 200 individuals to date. The resulting cohort comprised 65.9% identifying as Black or African American; 31.4% as White; and 2.7% as another race (e.g., multiracial, Asian, American Indian/Alaska Native). Community events, postcard mailings, and word-of-mouth yielded the highest numbers of enrolled study participants.

Jacobsen E, Lucas H, Moran C, Dixon RG, Ganguli M.
Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders 38(2):p 160-167, April–June 2024. | DOI: 10.1097/WAD.0000000000000618 

Ethnoracial Identity and Cognitive Impairment - A Community Study

Black Americans have a higher risk and prevalence of cognitive impairment compared to non-Hispanic White Americans, and nearly 40% of dementia cases worldwide are attributable to various potentially modifiable health and social risk factors. Through the MYHAT and 15104 Seniors Project studies, Dr. Ganguli and her colleagues investigated the relationships among race, mild cognitive impairment, and various, mostly modifiable, exposures associated with mild cognitive impairment or dementia.

In this paper led by Isabella Wood, MPH, the investigators found that, compared with White participants, Black participants had greater odds of mild cognitive impairment and were more likely to report depressive symptoms, diabetes, and stroke, to have high blood pressure and BMI, and to be carriers of the APOE-ɛ4 allele  (a genetic risk factor for dementia). Exposures associated with higher odds of mild cognitive impairment were diabetes, stroke, lifetime smoking, sleep disturbances, social isolation, loneliness, depression and anxiety symptoms, and vision and hearing loss. Importantly, the same factors were associated with mild cognitive impairment in both Black and White study participants. 

Wood I, Song R, Zhang Y, Jacobsen E, Hughes T, Chang CH, Ganguli M. 
Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders 38(2):p 152-159, April–June 2024. | DOI: 10.1097/WAD.0000000000000617