Laura B Zahodne
University of Michigan, MI·Psychology
Black older adults in the United States face a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) than White older adults. This gap is not fully explained by education, the apolipoprotein E ε4 risk gene, or other medical conditions.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
Neuroscience
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
cognitive aging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Follow MCAP participants for a third assessment and expand the cohort, then use latent growth curve modeling to test whether neighborhood socioeconomic status predicts differences in cognitive decline between Black and White older adults.
- Test whether neighborhood effects on cognition and on brain integrity, measured by structural MRI, act through infrastructure, stress, depressive symptoms and diet.
- Collect residential histories and link them to 1950 census data to identify life-course critical periods when neighborhood conditions most affect dementia risk.
- Develop a measure of neighborhood racial income differences that predicts ADRD risk beyond neighborhood socioeconomic status, and identify resilience factors among Black older adults.
More about the research
The project asks whether the neighborhoods people live in, both now and across their lives, help drive this disparity. It also asks through which changeable pathways neighborhoods might act, which could point to new places to intervene.
Why it matters
ADRD is becoming more common as the U.S. population ages and affects Black families disproportionately. By identifying neighborhood, social, psychological and behavioral pathways that could be changed, the work could give policymakers and health programs concrete targets. These might include investing in public infrastructure or reducing stress, with the goal of lowering dementia risk and narrowing racial disparities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Katrina Walsemann
University of Maryland, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology
Build the Education Contextual Data Resource (ECDR), a long-term record of state and local school conditions such as per-pupil spending and segregation, describing what Black and White older adults experienced across birth cohorts.
Robert Turner
Duke University, NC·Neuroscience
Test whether repetitive head impacts and traumatic brain injury from American football are linked to worse later-life memory, thinking and psychiatric symptoms in Black male former players compared with unexposed Black men.
Alyssa Goldman
Boston College, MA·Social Science·Early-career
Estimate how personal social networks and social activities like volunteering change during the final five years of life, using growth curve models on National Health and Aging Trends Study data.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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