BvB Dallas will continue to partner with UT Southwestern Medical Center by funding the Clinical Neuropsychology Alzheimer’s Disease Fellowship, which provides the opportunity to rapidly develop expertise in differential diagnosis and treatment of dementia. BvB will also support UT Southwestern in their research to diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s disease by optimizing and validating techniques to deliver human tau antibodies across the blood brain barrier in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

BvB Dallas will continue to support the Senior Source via the Guardianship Program, through which the agency is appointed guardian of older adults deemed incapacitated by the Dallas County Probate Courts. All of the clients of the Guardianship Program have some sort of cognitive impairment with roughly 50% having a dementia diagnosis. Guardians make decisions pertaining to healthcare, medication, housing, and any other needed supportive services.

BvB Dallas will continue its partnership with Center for BrainHealth with a new program called “PAUSE to Thrive When Facing a Diagnostic.” After the world shifted to remote, online, and hybrid services the last few years, the Center for BrainHealth looks to offer an online platform to deliver the Discovery program reformatted for online audiences and renamed “PAUSE to Thrive.” This program will communicate critical areas proven to support a positive path, with the acronym PAUSE encapsulating five key concepts – Purpose, Acceptance, Understanding, Support, and Energy. “PAUSE to Thrive” training modules will include science-based concepts, action items, and other elements of our traditional Discovery Group.

BvB Dallas supports the Alzheimer's Association as they seek to start the “Healthy Brain Initiative” by creating a network of Hispanic women empowered with the knowledge to influence the health outcomes of their communities. They will recruit and grow their network of volunteers in order to reach the maximum number of Hispanic women focusing on informal education to increase awareness of modifiable risk factors within the Hispanic American community. They also wish to identify new opportunities for community collaboration with organizations serving the Hispanic community, and to work alongside one another to determine dementia-related needs of the community.

BvB Dallas has supported Juliette Fowler Communities for two years now. This year’s funding will be an extension of their previous Dementia-Friendly Dallas Program called “I’m Still Here.” The “I’m Still Here” program philosophy will train people to increase their personal awareness and recognize signs of dementia in those around them. Individuals served could include Fowler residents and family members as well as individuals living with Alzheimer’s in the greater Dallas community. This will allow participants to offer compassionate assistance that maintains dignity for those suffering with dementia while allowing them to feel heard, feel included, and to thrive.

BvB Dallas is excited to partner with the Center for Vital Longevity at UT Dallas by supporting their study to investigate neural selectivity as a potential biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease. The findings could support the proposal that neural selectivity is sensitive to brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease and suggests that one cause of cognitive impairment in very early stages is a breakdown in the brain’s ability to represent information at sufficiently high levels of precision.