Partner Spotlights
The BOLD PHCOE on EDD has many wonderful partners in the field of early detection of dementia. Here we highlight the innovative early detection work by leaders in this field and showcase concrete, actionable efforts adaptable to diverse settings.
Please click on the below links to learn more about their exceptional work.
LEAD Coalition
Leaders Engaged on Alzheimer’s Disease (LEAD Coalition) is a diverse and growing national coalition organized around promoting federal public policy to make life better for people facing dementia while advancing the science to end dementia, the LEAD Coalition has a strong and interwoven emphasis on building collaborative relationships among stakeholder organizations outside of purely federal policy projects. Those relationships advance the mission-focused priorities of each participating organization and build their capacity to affect federal policy results.
Billings Clinic
Michael Temporal, MD is a family physician and geriatrician at Billings Clinic, Montana.His current clinical practice spans hospital, outpatient, long-term care, and hospice care.
The Billings Clinic has been working on embedding screening tools and workflow for cognitive assessment and care planning into their Cerner EMR. They have developed an interdisciplinary team including an RN care
manager, MSW social worker to work with primary and specialty teams and families to coordinate
comprehensive geriatric assessment and cognitive assessment and management.
Dementia Community Action Network (D-CAN)
D-CAN was created to address the significant gaps in Central Minnesota’s dementia care system originally
revealed by their Medical Society’s study with Central Minnesota Council on Aging to find out why
clinicians were not referring to dementia resources in their community. D-CAN follows Dr. Dale Bredesen’s care model that asks “Why?” (…does this person have dementia symptoms), improves on controllable dementia risk
factors, and maintains patient, caregiver, and family support with regular ongoing visits guiding them to
improved health span and hopefully to fewer dementia symptoms.
Dementia Friendly America is the U.S. licensee of the international Dementia Friends program, a global movement, developed by the Alzheimer’s Society in the United Kingdom, that is changing the way people think, act, and talk about dementia.
The Dementia Friendly America(DFA) initiative, administered by USAging and guided by a council of over 35 national leading organizations, launched in 2015 with a goal to ensure that communities and individuals across the U.S. were equipped to support people living with dementia and their care partners by becoming dementia friendly.
Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Thrive Program has memory care services in different departments with different scopes, structures, and operations that make up an interdisciplinary team that developed their model of care.
Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Thrive Program works to provide the best possible care for their patients by providing education about diseases, caregiver education, and guidance every step of the way to improve the lives of patients and their caregivers.
In Wisconsin, the Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRCs) are county-level agencies that provide resources and services at no cost to the public. The ADRCs are all about providing information, assistance, and decision support around anything related to long-term care for older adults and adults with disabilities at any age. The Dementia Care Specialist program in Wisconsin, which supports people with dementia and their caregivers in order to ensure the highest quality of life possible while living at home. The program is in its final expansion growing from serving 56 counties statewide coverage of all 72 counties in 2022.
The Alzheimer’s Disease and Healthy Aging Program sit in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Division at the Vermont Department of Health and is the functional unit of BOLD ADRD in Vermont. The program has developed a collaborative network of internal and external partners, in particular with the Department of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living. Focusing on the four public health domains to increase awareness, engagement, measurement and impact in Alzheimer’s Disease and brain health, the team meets regularly with CDC-funded program leads overseeing cardiovascular health, diabetes prevention and control, oral health, physical activity/nutrition, tobacco treatment, and You First, Vermont’s breast and cervical cancer initiative.
Georgia Department of Health B-SEEN Project/BOLD and Statewide Telehealth Expansion
This two-part Partner Spotlight features the Georgia Department of Public Health B-SEEN Project. B-SEEN implements an integrated, care-systems-level approach to brain health that ensures Georgians living with dementia, their caregivers, and the professionals serving this vulnerable population feel seen and heard. As GA DPH ramps up efforts to support Georgia’s ‘Aging Network’ collaborative and other dementia detection and care efforts around the state, the public health team has already made significant progress broaching opportunities to contract external providers for telemedicine through various collaborative agreement structures.
Read more about the Georgia B-Seen Project here and their telehealth expansion efforts here.
University of Washington Cognition in Primary Care Program
With support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Barak Gaster and Dr. Jacqueline Raetz have created a workable, efficient, and holistic model for primary care to evaluate cognition and brain health. The UW Cognition in Primary Care Program provides web resources to increase support for patients and their care partners, as well as clinical tools to help PCPs compassionately counsel about a new diagnosis. When patients come into the clinic, simple checklists embedded into the electronic health record (EHR) serve as a backbone for tracking and facilitating this model of wraparound care. Almost all the materials created by this initiative are available for free for anyone to download – visit www.Cognition-PrimaryCare.org.
Mississippi BOLD Program - Public Health Actions to Advance Early Detection of Dementia
Under the direction of Dr. Kina L. White, the Mississippi Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Program (MS ADRDP) uses an evidence-based, data-driven approach to implement a statewide ADRD strategic plan focused on developing a public health education program for brain health and enhancing partnerships between cross-sector partners to collaboratively reduce ADRD-specific morbidity and mortality. As part of her work Dr. White has led the Building our Largest Dementia Infrastructure (BOLD) program for the MS ADRDP, establishing a number of initiatives to increase cohesion across state agencies and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) engaged in healthy aging work and bring brain health equity to the foreground as topic of public health concern. Key among these initiatives has been the appointment of Health Equity Ambassadors to each of the five goal groups responsible for developing and updating the priorities of Mississippi’s ADRD state plan. The Health Equity Ambassadors are volunteer community champions that serve as a liaison between the Alzheimer’s State Plan Goal Groups and the Mississippi BOLD Program.