2023 - 2024
Healthy Aging Study Annual Report
Over the past year, the Emory Healthy Aging Study has worked to identify how aging affects our bodies and minds. We reached some incredible milestones in 2023. See what we learned, meet the researchers who helped us get there, and the participants who made it all possible.
If you had the chance to change the world, would you?
Welcome to the Emory Healthy Aging Study. This is your opportunity to partner with leading physicians at Emory University and help make discoveries that will change our understanding of aging and age-related diseases for generations to come.
It’s easy. It’s historic. It’s one for the ages.
Our 100,000 Goal
100,000 participants. That’s the number we’re aiming for, and we’re proud to say we're 33.6% of the way there. Our participants come from all ages, races, and walks of life. Because of the diversity required for this study, we utilized several different methods to reach potential candidates.
From Lead to Participant
How will we hit our 100,000 participants goal? We start by generating leads. The first step is to garner interest and engagement in this historic research endeavor. We continue to introduce people to the Emory Healthy Aging Study.
From there, we ask these leads to register for more information. Preliminary data is gathered to determine the potential participant's age and email address. They'll create a password so that if they pause this step, it’s easily accessible at a later date.
Participation in this study relies entirely on consent from the volunteer. We make everything easy and transparent for each participant, so that they know what they are agreeing to by joining the study. After they've given their approval, we gather their contact information. The final step in participation is the completion of the health history questionnaire. This valuable data is helping us better understand how we age and age-related diseases.
Participants
Meet the people who made it all possible; our participants. Their willingness to volunteer their time to our research has led to some astounding discoveries.
Participants by Age
The mystery of aging is the entire reason for the Emory Healthy Aging Study, and therefore is an important factor in determining if a candidate is eligible to participate. While we're open to participants over the age of 18, our largest pool comes from the 56 - 75 range. These are the people that feel the effects of aging most, and are learning about their own health as well as helping the study.
Participants by Gender & Race
We strive for diversity within the Emory Healthy Aging Study. It's important that our research discovers how different people from all walks of life are impacted by aging. In 2023, we saw that a large portion of our volunteers were White females. We have been successful in our efforts so far to diversify our candidate pool through our continued work alongside the Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center engagement core.
Participants by Gender
Participants by Race
Participants by Ethnicity
Questionnaire Responses
A large part of our research involves self-reported data from our participants. Our Health History Questionnaire aims to tell us about the personal lives of our volunteers, as well as their family history with age-related diseases. What would your answers look like if you joined the study? Find out below!
Diet
How many cups of fruit do you eat in a day?
Examples of cups of fruit include: 1 large orange; 1 small apple; 1 medium pear; 1 large banana; 1 medium grapefruit; 1 small watermelon wedge; 1 large cantaloupe wedge; 2 large or 3 medium plums; 8 large strawberries; 32 grapes; and 1/2 cup raisins.
How many servings of fish do you eat in a week?
(A serving of fish is 3.5 ounces, approximately the same size as a deck of cards).
How many cups of vegetables do you eat in a day?
(Any vegetable or 100% vegetable juice counts as a member of the vegetable group). Examples of cups of vegetables include: 1 large bell pepper; 1 medium potato; 2 large celery stalks; 1 cup cooked greens or 2 cups raw greens (spinach, collards, mustard greens, turnip greens); 2 cups lettuce; 12 baby carrots or 2 medium carrots; 1 large, sweet potato; 1 large ear of corn; and 10 broccoli florets.
Health History
Do you have a family history of Alzheimer’s Disease (biological mother, father or sibling)?
Have you ever had migraine headaches?
How is your memory compared to 10 years ago?
Resources
Want insights into healthier living, answers from subject-matter experts, and access to live webinars with researchers? Explore the many resources available and get the information you're looking for.
Webinars
Take advantage of these free webinars to learn directly from the researchers and professionals here at Emory.
BrainTalk Live
BrainTalk Live was launched virtually to support and sustain our outreach mission for older adults. As a Core, our function is important and critical to recruit and retain individuals of color for active engagement in brain-related research. We have utilized the Zoom platform to meet the people that make up our community. This one-hour, interactive and mission-focused program has reached thousands of households to market, share, and educate individuals at-risk for memory impairment.
CEP Community Live
Every week the Charlie & Harriet Shaffer Cognitive Empowerment Program provides online educational content and/or physical activities for webinar attendees. Sessions will be led by service providers from the Cognitive Empowerment Team, and will cover topics such as cognitive training, physical activity, nutrition, yoga, tai chi, functional independence, art therapy, and much more. CEP Community Live events are open to all members of the community including people diagnosed with MCI or dementia, care partners, and clinicians.
What's Next? Practical Tips After Diagnosis
Open to anyone, this webinar provides patients, care partners, and caregivers with useful information to better navigate a recent diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer's, or related dementia.
This webinar is held the third Wednesday of each month from 12-1pm (EST)
Partner Resources
Partners like the Georgia Memory Net and the Charlie & Harriet Shaffer Cognitive Empowerment Program also have a variety of resources available.
Living with Mild Cognitive Impairment
This resource guide was written primarily for the person diagnosed with MCI, but is also used as a guide for Care Partners. It includes information about the diagnosis, how to manage symptoms, emotional and practical coping strategies, and planning for the future, among other topics.
Telehealth Options for Alzheimer's Diagnosis
Georgia Memory Net is working to make quality dementia diagnoses available to Georgians, no matter where they live in the state. This effort includes launching telehealth options for dementia diagnostic appointments. To learn more about getting a referral, visit the the Georgia Memory Net website.
Drug Infusions for Alzheimer's Disease: Frequently Asked Questions
In July 2023 a drug called LEQEMBI (lecanemab) was granted full FDA approval. This link below shares more information associated with LEQEMBI and answers many frequently asked questions.
Research
The Emory Healthy Aging Study is a multi-faceted, large-scale research effort to unlock the mysteries of how we age. While we look into the broad impacts of age-related diseases, we're also diving deeper into how the brain is affected through our sub-studies.
Emory Healthy Aging Substudies & Assessments
These substudies of the Emory Healthy Aging Study help us learn more about how our brain and mental health change as we grow older.
What We’ve Learned So Far
The Emory Healthy Aging Study has already been able to utilize data collected from participants to draw some interesting preliminary conclusions on the effects of aging.
On Perceived Cognitive Decline
Within our sample, minority race, older age, and greater mood symptoms significantly predicted participant perceptions about cognitive decline. Parental history of MCI and AD did not.
Those with mood symptoms are at a higher risk of perceived cognitive decline and warrant additional monitoring for the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
On Cognitive Testing
Based on other findings, we were encouraged to examine the construct validity of the MoCA indices. The MoCA (Montreal Cognitive Assessment) is a brief assessment of overall cognition over several domains including visuospatial skills, memory, attention, and executive function.
We compared performance scores on the MoCA indices to other well-validated neuropsychological measures of the same domain. The results suggest that the indices have some shortcomings and may not be as accurate as we’d like.
These findings reinforce the use of longer, but more complete and thorough cognitive testing in our research.
On Our mobile toolbox
The mobile toolbox project began with the goal of having a remote method to measure cognition. By using a mobile application, people would be able to regularly engage in cognitive tasks without having to come for an in-person visit.
We compared the results of our mobile app, Arrows, with the results of an older computer test, Flanker. These tests are designed to measure processing speed, visual attention, and inhibition.
There is preliminary evidence for task reliability given the relationship between Arrows and Flanker reaction times. The majority of perfect scores on Arrows suggests a difference in difficulty from Flanker. Being able to use one hand with mobile verses the two on Flanker may contribute to this.
Future research will incorporate task modifications to increase the overall difficulty of Arrows to better allow us to compare it with Flanker.
On Purpose-in-Life
A major goal of the Emory Healthy Aging Study is to figure out what factors help reduce or eliminate cognitive decline that can come with getting older. One fascinating aspect of the brain is that positive and negative mental states can influence disease risk. Until now, the effects of these emotional states have largely focused on the detrimental effects of depressive symptoms on cognition. Using the EHAS data, Emory investigators examined the effect of purpose-in-life and asked whether it was associated with less perceived cognitive decline with advancing age. Purpose-in-life is a tendency to derive life meanings and purpose that generally stays stable throughout a person’s lifetime.
Using the unprecedented and newly acquired data on 5,000 participants of the Emory Healthy Aging Study, Emory investigators led by Aliza Wingo and Thomas Wingo found that purpose-in-life was an independent and important protective factor against cognitive decline even when considered head-to-head with other important with known protective (education, exercise, enrichment activities) and risk factors of cognition (depression, anxiety, diagnosed medical, mental health problems, smoking, alcohol use, family history of dementia, and others). Excitingly, the protective effect of purpose-in-life was observed as early as middle age. Currently, it is not known whether enhancing purpose-in-life or other psychological factors would be beneficial as an intervention. Future investigations are expected to address that important question to provide additional tools to help prevent cognitive decline with aging.
On Air Pollution and Cognitive Decline
Data collected through the Emory Healthy Aging Study is helping researchers unlock new discoveries about aging and, in this instance, brain health. Read more about how researchers have used the data understand how air pollution and neighborhood socioeconomic status is connected with cognitive decline in older adults.
On Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers
Research has taught us that analyzing biomarkers found in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) serves as one of the most effective ways for physicians to diagnose patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, it is now known that while one protein might help a doctor diagnose a White patient with AD the same might not be true for an African American patient. Therefore, it is critical for the future of AD research and treatment that we find which proteins do and do not discriminate among different individuals so we can better diagnose all patients, no matter their racial makeup. In the article below, researchers from the Emory Healthy Brain Study looked at thousands of different protein biomarkers from individuals with and without AD who self-identified as African American or White. Their research identified some proteins in the CSF that consistently discriminated between patients with AD and healthy controls irrespective of race. However, other proteins showed distinct differences between African American and White individuals. These findings will help us develop more effective tools for diagnosing AD across all patient populations. To learn more, click the button below.
Featured Researchers
