Background

​

• More than 1 in 9 older adults aged 65 and older have Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias (ADRD), and 1 in 3 older adults will die with ADRD. As ADRD worsens, both persons with dementia and their caregivers suffer.

• Few evidence-based interventions exist to help ameliorate the symptoms and improve the quality of life for persons with dementia (PWD) and their caregivers.

• There is an urgent need to develop, test, and implement palliative care interventions within the field of dementia with an ultimate goal of enhancing the quality of life of persons living with dementia and those who care for them.

 

The Dementia Palliative Care Clinical Trials Training Program directly addresses national priorities for dementia research and is grounded on the NIH Stage Model with a strong focus on research rigor, mechanisms, implementation, and scalability.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

The Dementia Palliative Care Clinical Trials Traning Program (Dementia-PCCT)

​

The Dementia Palliative Care Clinical Trials Training Program provides a foundation in practical aspects involving the design and conduct of randomized clinical trials in dementia palliative care. The Program is appropriate for early career researchers or other mid-career researchers and health professionals interested in developing competence in the planning, design, and execution of randomized clinical trials in persons with Alzheimer’s Disease or Related Dementias (ADRD). The 10-month-long Program includes a combination of webinars, small group sessions, and a 5-day in-person Institute where learners will work together to design a trial and also learners will develop their own grant application addressing ADRD. 

 

The curriculum will enable participants to: 

• Describe the principles underlying the conduct of unbiased clinical trials.

• Identify the unique challenges posed by clinical trials conducted in persons with dementia (PWD) and their caregivers.

• Evaluate RCT designs in terms of their appropriateness for ADRD populations and their caregivers.

• Select appropriate strategies for enrollment, randomization, and retention.

• Design an intervention to address the needs of PWD and their caregivers.

• Understand methods for monitoring, coordinating, and conducting clinical trials in PWD and their caregivers.

• Develop basic strategies for appropriate statistical analyses.

• Design a dementia palliative care clinical trial with your working group.

• Better understand the process used in NIH Study Sections to review clinical trials. 

• Develop individual plans for grant submissions and access expert consultation to strengthen the application.

• Build community among palliative care researchers conducting research in populations with ADRD

 

The entire program lasts 10 months, including a week-long in-person meeting (called “The Institute”) as well as booster virtual sessions after attending The Institute. The research training team includes a committed and diverse group of faculty members who are dedicated to both improving clinical trials and developing investigators in dementia palliative care clinical trials research.