Living in a neighborhood that has high poverty, poor housing conditions, and high unemployment has been linked to higher mortality and higher rates of certain diseases such as diabetes and cancer. A new data analysis study aims to identify connections between neighborhood disadvantage and Alzheimer's disease - both of which disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States.     

Amy Kind, MD, PhD (pictured at upper right), associate professor, and Barbara Bendlin, PhD (pictured at lower right), both of Geriatrics and Gerontology, have been awarded $3.8M over one year (R01 award) by the National Institutes of Health-National Institute on Aging for a proposal entitled, "Neighborhood Socioeconomic Contextual Disadvantage and Alzheimer's Disease."

Dr. Kind and colleagues have created a metric called the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) which incorporates poverty, education, housing and employment indicators. The ADI predicts disparity-related health outcomes, and can be used to establish a `dose' and timing of exposure to lifetime neighborhood disadvantage. Using this approach, Dr. Kind and colleagues created and validated neighborhood-level quantifications of socioeconomic contextual disadvantage for the full United States, which comprises over 34M ZIP + 4 codes.

In collaboration with Dr. Bendlin's team and by utilizing data available through the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention, the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, and the US Census, researchers will examine the impact, mediators, and moderators of exposure to socioeconomic contextual disadvantage on the development of pathologic features specific to Alzheimer's disease, including vascular burden and cognitive decline. 

Researchers hope that this work will lead to a better understanding of cause and effect links between neighborhood disadvantage and Alzheimer's disease, as a first step to identifying new ways to combat the condition.

Resources:

• Neighborhood Socioeconomic Contextual Disadvantage and Alzheimer's Disease - NIH Granteome
• "Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Help Explain Some Of Alzheimer’s Disease Racial Disparities," Department of Medicine, October 4, 2017