Collaborative Study on Rural Aging and Cognitive Health Earns Prestigious Recognition

The Center on Aging is pleased to announce that a collaborative research team has been awarded the 2024 Armin Grams Memorial Research Award. The project, Usability and Validity of In-Home Assessment of Mobility and Speech Production in Aging Rural Vermonters with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment, is co-led by investigators David Jangraw, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Denise Peters, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Rehabilitation and Movement Science. Other faculty team members include Victoria Priganc, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Rehabilitation and Movement Science, Occupational Therapy Program; Co-Directors of the Center for Biomedical Innovation Lecturer Samantha Fox, B.S., and Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering Michael J. Rosen, Ph.D.

The project will assess the usability and predictive validity of in-home instruments designed to measure mobility, activities of daily living, and speech production in aging rural Vermonters with and without mild cognitive impairment. After identifying a set of instruments that are robust, usable, and effective in rural settings, the team will generate pilot data for a large National Institute on Aging grant proposal to study the ability of these instruments to predict age-related functional decline in a longitudinal study of mild cognitive impairment.

“Working with rural Vermonters in their own home has the potential to be incredibly impactful,” state Peters. “This is where functional independence matters most, and we are excited about the potential ways we can design and utilize in-home health care technology to allow individuals to live longer and remain safe in the place they feel most comfortable—their own homes.”

This research venture will introduce multiple faculty researchers to the field of aging and enable this multidisciplinary study of age-related decline. From the College of Engineering, Fox’s experience with movement analysis and wearable sensors and Jangraw’s speech analysis experience will be applied to the study of aging for the first time in this project. From the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, physical and occupational therapy experience from Peters and Priganc will aid in targeting the sensing technology to the health needs of the target population of rural-dwelling elders. The team’s combined research experience enables a novel multi-factorial assessment of functional aging, including wearable accelerometers and in-home microphones to monitor aspects of mobility and speech, to investigate age-related declines in cognitive and physical health.

“This project looks at age-related health changes from multiple angles, from physical strength to cognitive flexibility, and it does it in the home, where these changes can really affect people’s lives,” stated Jangraw. “When you do experiments outside of the lab, it’s a real challenge to cut through the noise and find the important patterns and routines. That’s why I’m so excited about the team we’ve assembled— it has the variety of expertise and perspectives that we need to make this work.”

Prignac agreed with Jangraw, noting that “each member of the research team has their unique lens and expertise on how to study and enhance age-related heath, and this project provides an opportunity to pull it all together to assess individuals more as whole versus along only one dimension.”

Furthermore, this project will connect the Center on Aging with the Center for Biomedical Innovation (CBI), whose mission includes using promising translational research—especially research affecting rural health care—to develop practical new healthcare technologies. The project not only bridges the gap between controlled research environments and community settings, but the project also provides opportunities for the translation of the research to industry through the CBI. These efforts collectively advance the study of age-related decline, its early detection, and the translation of tools to mitigate related challenges in real-world settings, thereby opening new avenues for research and application.

“This project is strongly aligned with the goals of the Center on Aging and has the potential to contribute to our understanding of aging in rural areas in a multidimensional way,” explained Katharine Cheung, M.D., Ph.D., Interim Director of the Center on Aging. She noted that this is the first grant the Center on Aging has funded since 2016 and was a matching grant for $75,000 (the home college or department contributed $25,000). “The Center on Aging has a renewed interest in growing the cadre of researchers at UVM to lead the state in innovations to improve the quality of life and resilience of older Vermonters,” continued Cheung.

More about the Armin Grams Memorial Research Award

The Armin Grams Memorial Research Award honors the founder of the Human Development and Family Studies Program at the University of Vermont, Armin Grams, Ph.D. While at UVM, Grams developed and taught several courses on gerontology and was instrumental in establishing both the UVM Center on Aging and a Gerontology Certificate program. He also served in many national and international organizations in the area of aging including President of the Association of Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE), 1992-1993.

Support is awarded to pilot research projects that will lead to extramural funding in aging and longevity research. The overall goal of the award is to increase funded research at the University of Vermont focused on aging and longevity. Key areas of interest for the Center include the research focused on quality of life of older Vermonters, aging in rural areas, innovations in healthcare communication with older adults, caregiving and aging, resilience and longevity in Vermonters.

More information on the award and its namesake:  http://www.med.uvm.edu/centeronaging/researchandresources