Delivering on its mission, the Association provided care and support more than 7.1 million times through channels including alz.org, care consultations, support groups, education programs and information. Surveys indicate that constituents are highly satisfied with Association programs and services and would recommend them to others.
The Association's free, national 24/7 Helpline is available around the clock, 365 days a year. Helpline specialists and master’s-level clinicians received nearly 240,000 calls, offering confidential support and information to people facing Alzheimer's and all other dementia. The service is partially funded by a five-year, $6.2 million federal grant awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Community Living.
More than 3,000 people completed the essentiALZ® — Alzheimer's Association Training and Certification, an online program for professional care workers on how to apply evidence-based, person-centered care practices when caring for people living with dementia. A program evaluation showed that those who complete the training and pass the certification demonstrate statistically significant increases in knowledge and confidence to care for individuals living with dementia. The evaluation also found that learners highly rated the user experience, program impact and likelihood of using the learned skills in practice.
The Association and The Joint Commission announced a collaboration to help improve quality and safety in dementia care in nursing, skilled nursing and assisted living facilities. The Joint Commission's Memory Care Certification requirements were updated, including new and revised requirements that reflect current scientific evidence and best practices in long-term and memory care. The requirements align with the Alzheimer's Association Dementia Care Practice Recommendations and were finalized after analyzing the results of a Standards Review Panel and Public Field Reviews.
The Alzheimer's Association Dementia Care Provider Roundtable (AADCPR) — thought leaders from 23 organizations representing home health, home care, life plan communities, assisted living and nursing homes — awarded a partial sponsorship of $150,000 to support work measuring and classifying different styles of caregiving and how they affect health outcomes for individuals living with dementia and their caregivers. The group also released a white paper focused on the response to COVID-19 in long-term and community-based care, which built on the Association's Emergency Preparedness Guidelines developed at the beginning of the pandemic. AADCPR member organizations serve over 600,000 individuals daily in over 5,100 points of services in all 50 states and 15 countries, and support approximately 375,000 staff.
The Alzheimer's Association Innovation Roundtable launched, bringing together innovators, champions and experts across the health care sector to reduce risk, improve early detection and increase access to evidence-based, person-centered care for those facing Alzheimer's and all other dementia. The group has 11 founding organizations, including health systems, life sciences companies and government agencies.
The Association presented its seventh Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) series, Alzheimer's and Dementia Care ECHO Program for Clinicians. The program connects dementia care experts with primary care practices in a series of interactive, case-based telementoring sessions, enabling clinicians to better manage dementia, and emphasizes high-quality, person-centered care in community-based settings. Nearly 100 primary care practices and over 300 health care providers have completed this ECHO training since 2018, influencing more than 370,000 lives. In addition to its ECHO programs, the Association has provided guidance and technical support to five new Alzheimer's and Dementia Care ECHO hubs run by partner organizations since 2018.
The Association's free ALZ Talks monthly webinar series relaunched in a new, conversational format, providing education, information, news and resources on a variety of dementia and caregiving topics. Four presentations — covering the Association's 24/7 Helpline, dementia conversations, managing money, and dementia and the entire family — garnered 12,000 event registrations, over 169,000 online views and 79 million impressions.
The National Early-Stage Advisory Group comprises individuals living in the early stage of Alzheimer's or another dementia and their care partners. Advisors share their experiences through media outlets and other public channels to raise awareness, reduce stigma and provide guidance on the development of Association programs and services. Their efforts generated over 10 million media impressions in local and national markets. In FY22, current and former advisors were selected to sit on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Alzheimer’s Project Act Advisory Panel and lent their expertise as part of the National Institute on Aging's IMPACT Collaborative Lived Experience Panel.
Through its health systems initiative, the Association continued to work with over 350 health systems and payers nationwide to enhance their care of people living with dementia by providing clinical settings solutions to improve health outcomes and manage care costs. Health systems partner with the Association and commit to policy changes; in FY22, nearly 11 million people benefited from increased access to dementia care through these changes.
More than 800,000 searches were conducted on the Alzheimer's Association & AARP Community Resource Finder, a database of dementia and aging-related resources that connects individuals living with dementia and their caregivers with local programs and services. The top three searches centered on Association programs, home care and community services.
ALZConnected®, a free online community for people living with dementia and their caregivers, gained over 11,000 new members, recorded more than 39,000 posts by community members and provided over 587,000 user sessions. Alzheimer's Navigator®, an online assessment tool allowing people living with the disease and caregivers to create personalized action plans, saw more than 65,000 user sessions.
The Association led a hybrid session, "Leveraging Emerging Technologies to Strengthen the Dementia Care Workforce," during ADvancing States' Annual Home and Community-Based Services Conference. The session highlighted the importance of supporting caregivers, addressing social isolation and Project VITAL (Virtual Inclusive Technology for All Living) — a national model developed by the Association and Florida Department of Elder Affairs that addresses social isolation while educating care professionals — and ways for states to incorporate the project. The presentation also highlighted the Association's Dementia Care Practice Recommendations, Project ECHO and how to bring high-quality, dementia-informed, person-centered care into long-term and community-based care settings.
The Association launched "Managing Money: A Caregiver's Guide to Finances," its first evidence-based education program. The program focuses on the costs of caregiving and benefits of early financial and legal planning, and is available for both in-person or online delivery in English and Spanish.
The Association continued as the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure for Alzheimer's Act Public Health Center of Excellence on Dementia Risk Reduction to lead a national effort to develop and disseminate public health strategies and resources aimed at reducing risk of cognitive decline and dementia. The Association worked with three local public health departments in small- to mid-sized cities and counties through a three-step process to mobilize community stakeholders to address dementia risk factors. The Association also worked with its scientific and academic partner, Wake Forest School of Medicine, to review and synthesize the evidence on social determinants of health that increase the risk of dementia and those that act as barriers to addressing modifiable risk factors.
The Association published a series of summaries on 11 possible risk factors for cognitive decline and dementia, reviewing the state of the evidence and the implications for public health action. A report was released outlining risk reduction provisions that could be included in state and local Alzheimer's disease plans.
Several psychosocial interventions were studied to examine their effectiveness in FY22. The Strengthening the Financial Literacy & Preparedness of Family Caregivers study looked at the effectiveness of a new education program for family caregivers and demonstrated significant short- and long-term outcomes in knowledge, self-efficacy and behavioral actions. The essentiALZ care training program was evaluated through a randomized trial and demonstrated statistically significant increases in knowledge and confidence. A third study on care consultation intervention examined the effectiveness of brief solution-focused therapy delivered through the Association's 24/7 Helpline and found that callers in this group had a greater ability to accomplish their goals.
To help state and local health departments address brain health, the Healthy Brain Initiative's (HBI) Leadership Committee, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Association, kicked off the development of a new HBI Road Map, which will address risk reduction, early detection and diagnosis of cognitive impairment, and dementia caregiving. The next HBI Road Map needs stronger emphasis and integration of health equity and utilization of a cross-sector systems approach. The committee will take input from over 100 experts in the field to compile a national perspective on the intersection of public health and brain health, dementia and caregiving.
The Association and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) announced the inaugural cohort of the Healthy Brain Initiative (HBI) Road Map Strategists. The first nationwide effort focused on addressing dementia at the local level, the Road Map Strategist Initiative will increase eight local public health departments' capacity to address cognitive health and dementia in their communities. The grantees will designate a part-time HBI Road Map Strategist — a public health official working in support and coordination with public health partners, including health systems. With support and guidance from the Association and NACCHO, Road Map Strategists will conduct a needs assessment, train local health officials and key community partners, and lead implementation of public health action on dementia.
The Association continued collecting and disseminating public health data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System on dementia caregiving and cognitive decline. The most successful campaign to date concluded in FY22, with 49 states and one territory collecting population-level data on dementia caregivers.