About the Alzheimer's Resilience Core
Healthy Living for a Healthy Brain
The Alzheimer's Resilience Core partners with diverse communities to learn what protects thinking and memory as we age—and to make that knowledge useful to everyone.
Mission
Advance prevention science and empower lifelong brain health
The Alzheimer's Resilience Core partners with diverse communities to advance dementia prevention science and empower people to build lifelong brain health.
Vision
Brain health as a standard part of aging care
A future where optimizing brain health is a standard part of aging care, and every person has equitable opportunity to live and age well.
Why this work
Dementia is not inevitable
An estimated 45% of dementia risk is tied to fourteen factors that can potentially be changed across a lifetime. Some people carry the biological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease and never develop symptoms. Understanding what protects them—and how much of that protection anyone can build—is what the Alzheimer's Resilience Core aims to find out.
A risk factor is not a mechanism
Statistical associations do not explain how activity, hearing, or sleep reaches the brain. Until those pathways are understood, prevention advice stays a list rather than an explanation.
One visit cannot answer a lifetime question
Brain aging unfolds across decades. Repeated measurement of the same people is what shows which changes come first and how habits, biology, and outcomes move together.
The evidence base does not look like the population
Research findings are powerful, but they may not fit communities that were never enrolled. A representative cohort makes it possible to learn whether prevention works for everyone.
The burden is not shared evenly
Differences in dementia burden are unlikely to have one cause. Studying the communities most affected is the only way to distinguish the biological, social, and environmental factors involved.
Goals
Where this leads
Four goals guide every part of the Alzheimer's Resilience Core, from the first community event to the science it will eventually support.
Build a Cohort That Reflects Washington State
Community-engaged recruitment prioritizes racial, ethnic, geographic, and socioeconomic diversity, so findings generalize to those who carry the greatest burden of dementia.
Uncover the Biology of Resilience
Identify biomarker and genetic signatures that separate resilient brains from vulnerable ones, opening the door to earlier detection and more targeted intervention.
Turn Discovery Into Everyday Guidance
Build tools that measure individual risk more precisely and return personalized, actionable feedback to participants.
Build Infrastructure That Outlasts Any Single Grant
Establish a digital platform, biorepository, and permanent integration with the UW Alzheimer's Disease Research Center so this work continues beyond a single funding cycle.
Values
The commitments behind every partnership, conversation, and discovery
Equity, Justice & Respect
We remove structural, geographic, linguistic, and economic barriers to research and brain health resources, treating every person with dignity.
Representation & Diversity
We pursue racial, ethnic, geographic, and socioeconomic diversity so prevention science reflects the populations most affected by dementia.
Curiosity & Discovery
We are genuinely fascinated by the brain, the science of aging, and the unanswered questions that dementia research has yet to solve.
Innovation & Creativity
We address difficult prevention problems with novel infrastructure, flexible thinking, and iterative exploration.
Collaboration & Partnership
The most impactful research is done with people, not on them—through partnerships with communities, institutions, and the broader scientific community.
Agency & Empowerment
We focus on what can be built and protected, empowering every person to play an active role in their own brain health.
Who it is for
A study is worth building when three groups gain from it
The people in it, the communities they come from, and the field that inherits the results. The Alzheimer's Resilience Core is built so none of those three is asked to wait on the others.
For participants
Taking part should give something back
Participants receive personalized, actionable feedback and an ongoing relationship with a research team that knows their history.
For communities
Communities should see themselves in the evidence
Community partners help shape the questions, solve barriers to participation, and bring findings back through sustained local relationships.
For science
What protects a brain deserves the same effort as what harms it
Repeated measures of demographics, social determinants, genetics, biomarkers, and lifestyle create a resource that can be shared with researchers beyond this lab.
The evidence gets better when more people are in it
The Resilience Cohort is being built now across Washington state. Learn what taking part involves.
How to Join