Stanford ADRC Outreach, Recruitment, and Education Core
The Outreach, Recruitment, and Education Core assists in recruiting volunteers for the Stanford Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). Our recruitment emphasizes patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Dementia with Lewy Bodies; patients with mild cognitive impairament; and healthy older controls without neurological disease or cognitive impairment.
The Core plays a crucial role in enrolling and retaining patients and controls who are Hispanic/Latino or American Indian These groups are poorly represented in research programs on cognitive aging and neurodegenerative disorders. In many instances, Core efforts begin with educational programs and stress reduction programs for the caregiver, who is recruited along with the patient.
Other Core aims are to provide educational opportunities for medical students, medical residents and fellows, and health professionals who work with patients with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease and their families.
Our academic and community partners included the Stanford Geriatric Education Center; the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute; the Northern California and Northern Nevada chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, the American Parkinson Disease Association; and the Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley.
VJ Periyakoil, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine (Primary Care and Population Health)
Outreach, Recruitment, and Education Core leader
Dr. Periyakoil received her medical degree from the University of Madras (India) and trained in internal medicine. She completed a geriatric medicine fellowship at Stanford University and is board certified both in geriatric medicine and in hospice and palliative care. She is associate director of Palliative Care Services at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, and at Stanford University she directs the Palliative Care Education and Training Program, the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program, and Stanford eCampus. Dr. Periyakoil is a nationally recognized leader in geriatrics and palliative care, and her research focuses on well-being in the context of ethnogeriatrics and end-of-life care. In her research, she has explored barriers to advanced care planning in diverse patient groups; promoted quality of care for diverse, seriously ill patients; and used mobile health technology to understand and mitigate health disparities in multi-ethnic, multilingual populations. She serves as associate editor for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and senior associate editor for the Journal of Palliative Care.
Jennie Leeder Clark, MA
Program Manager, Memory Support Program
Ms. Clark received her Bachelor of Art degree in sociology and Master of Art degree in gerontology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She manages the Memory Support Program in the Stanford Health Care Aging Adult Services. Here, she has helped develop programs and services to assist people with dementia and their families. Within the Outreach, Recruitment, and Education Core, Ms. Clark focuses on developing community partnerships to raise awareness on the need for, and crucial importance of, research on Alzheimer's disease and related disorders.
Allyson C. Rosen, PhD, ABPP-CN
Clinical Associate Professor (Affiliated) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Rosen is Director of Dementia Education at the Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC) at the Palo Alto VAMC. She completed college at Brown University, a clinical psychology Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University, clinical neuropsychology internship at the Long Island Jewish Hospital in New York, clinical neuropsychology fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin and research fellowships at National Institute on Aging and Stanford. For the past decade Dr. Rosen provided dementia education in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association and other community organizations. Dr. Rosen’s funded research has focused on applying cognitive neuroscience of aging to improve clinical practice in older adults by using cognitive measures, brain imaging, and noninvasive brain stimulation. Studies include using fMRI as an outcome measure for cognitive training, adapting transcranial magnetic stimulation to brain atrophy using fMRI, and using structural MRI to avoid postoperative cognitive decline and improve outcome from carotid vascular procedures
Blair Chinn Humber, MS
Outreach, Recruitment, and Education Core Research Assistant
Blair Humber helps coordinate outreach and educational events tailored to specific community groups. She received her master degree in clinical psychology from Palo Alto University, where she is now a PhD candidate. Blair has experience in assessments and interventions in community mental health, rehabilitation, hospital outpatient, and adult day health care settings. She has conducted cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness interventions for older adults, and skills-building workshops for caregivers. She has research interests in dementia education and caregiver support for underserved populations, and in supporting older adults and their families through transitions that accompany aging.
Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, PhD, ABPP
Professor (Research) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science (Public Mental Health and Population Sciences), Emerita
Dr. Gallagher-Thompson is the founding director of the ADRC Outreach, Recruitment, and Education core. In her status as Professor Emerita, she continues to serve the Core and the Stanford ADRC. She received her doctoral degree in clinical psychology/ adult development and aging from the University of Southern California, and she has had a distinguished career as a researcher, educator, and clinician in the field of geropsychology. Dr. Gallagher-Thompson is best noted for empirical studies on the efficacy of psychosocial interventions to reduce stress and improve the psychological wellbeing of family caregivers of older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Her Coping with Caregiving program is translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Persian. Dr. Gallagher-Thompson is expert in ethnogeriatrics, the study of how racial, ethnic, and cultural disparities affect access to, and use of, health and mental health services. She authored more than 200 journal articles, co-edited the second edition of Ethnicity and the Dementias, and serves as associate editor for the journal Clinical Gerontologist.