Our Nevada Exploratory Alzheimer?s Disease Research Center (NVEADRC) is a novel and ambitious research endeavor aiming at filling a gap from existing ADRCs, which is to collect and share high-quality biomedical data and specimens from individuals suffering dementia from rural areas. Like for all novel enterprises, the NVEADRC needs a fully committed leadership to steer and prioritize its activities from the beginning of the project. For this, we have selected strong leaders with prior ADRC experience to lead the project. The Administrative Core (AC) is the driving entity for our NVEADRC. It will oversee the research and educational activities of a strong multidisciplinary team composed of investigators from the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health (LRBCH) and University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Most of the investigators are already part of other collaborative projects, which will greatly facilitate communication between the different Cores early on since most actors in the enterprise are already aware of the requirements for a successful large collaborative project. We have set four strategic aims for the AC.
In Aim 1, the AC will set up Cores operations with the goal of running this project over several decades. For this, the AC will call monthly meetings with all Core leaders to address progress and challenges. The meeting minutes will be sent to all NVEADRC actors to collect feedback for improvement and suggestions on novel directions. The AC will assure the successful integration of participating rural sites and investigators, and promote collaborations within the ADRC network. The AC will coordinate the review and guidance of the NVEADRC by integrating the feedback from an internal and an external advisory committee.
In Aim 2, the AC will work on professionalizing rural dementia healthcare and scientific research by determining the specific needs of rural medical professionals in neurodegenerative disorders education to create specific courses and materials (e.g. brochures and videos) for large broadcasting in NV and beyond. Moreover, by fostering the career development of female faculty the AC wants to offer a transformative experience to build a pipeline of future female ADRC collaborators and project leaders.
In Aim 3, we will leverage our community connections to inform patients about clinical trials and to recruit rural subjects in our clinical cohort.
In Aim 4, the AC will develop the necessary assessment procedures for compliance and to monitor performance. This includes compliance with human subjects, scientific integrity, information security and financial policy requirements from NIH. In addition, the AC will create the procedures for Core assessments to gauge progress based on pre- determined annual goals. Very importantly, the AC is in charge of the successful transfer of the data captured from our rural subjects to the National Alzheimer?s Coordinating Center (NACC). Under its strong leadership, our team is ready to tackle this human challenge in order to dramatically improve dementia research and healthcare in the State of Nevada.
