Mentor: Dr. Nicole Anderson
Professor
Project Description
The Kimel Family Centre for Brain Health and Wellness is the world’s first research-driven community centre providing personalized dementia risk reduction programming. Participants (aged 50+, without dementia, and sufficiently fluent in English) will receive a comprehensive dementia risk assessment, and from that, a Personalized Program Strategy to follow in the Centre, addressing up to five modifiable dementia risk factors: physical activity, brain-healthy eating, cognitive engagement, social connections, and mental wellbeing. Cognition and dementia risk will be assessed every six months, and the comprehensive assessment will be repeated annually. We expect cognition to be maintained and dementia risk to decrease, to the extent that participants adhere to their Personalized Program Strategy. However, other factors such as self-efficacy, attitudes towards dementia, dementia literacy, and locus of control likely will affect outcomes. In this project, the SROP student will assess these other factors, and how they relate to other baseline characteristics such as personality, level of cognitive functioning, and sociodemographic factors. Eventually (after this summer program), we will use these factors as mediators in analyses of cognitive maintenance and dementia risk reduction, and the SROP student will be offered to review and have authorship on any presentations or publications that result from those analyses.
Does this project require the SROP Student to be in-person or remote? Either one
Mentorship Statement
What thrills me more than anything as a mentor is a passion for research, and I strive to do everything I can to cultivate and support that passion in my trainees. As part of this project, you will attend Kimel Family Centre research meetings and my lab meetings. Learning opportunities will also be offered by the Rotman Research Institute’s Research Training Centre. I, along with my postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Danielle D’Amico, will help you set the study up in the REDCap data capturing tool, and with data analysis in SPSS and/or R. I have joined this program because my goal for the Kimel Family Centre is for it to be equitable, accessible, and relevant for all, with a diverse membership, as well as a diverse staff and trainee cohort to support it.