Jessica AbramskyDana Foundation’s $150,000 grant to inform researchers from real-life experience, build community-scientist network.
Researchers are launching an initiative in Palm Beach County to close the nearly two-decade gap between what researchers discover about brain health and how long it takes to see meaningful change.
To that end, the Dana Foundation gave $150,000 to the Palm Health Foundation for “Civic Neuroscience in Action.”
It’s an effort to reduce what researchers call the “know-do gap,” the time between scientific discovery, the “know,” and applying the discovery, the “do.”
The program puts local residents in rooms with researchers from the start of a study, rather than treating them as test subjects after the science is done. It builds on the region’s growing Brain Coast brand, which links South Florida’s brain science institutions with the communities they serve.
Researchers meet residents
At the center of the initiative is Project Circle, a series of sessions where residents and researchers explore brain health, memory and resilience. This ensures that residents are involved in the research from the beginning, helping researchers decide what to research, how it’s done and how the findings are shared back to the community in an easily digestible way.
Palm Health Foundation President and CEO Patrick McNamara said the grant is meant to speed up that process by tightening the connection between scientists and the people they’re studying.
“What we’re looking to do is better coordinate and accelerate that translation loop between research … and the settings in health care and in the community, so that there is a much tighter loop of translation going on,” McNamara said.
McNamara said by the time research discoveries are made in the lab and that information is widely available to the public and applied by physicians, about 17 years has elapsed.
He said closing this gap is urgent in some South Florida communities where residents haven’t seen research findings translated into action yet, including Riviera Beach, Delray Beach and the Glades.
The program is open to all residents of Palm Beach County. This includes residents who are healthy.
The West Palm Beach-based Palm Health Foundation, formed in 2001 after the sale of Good Samaritan and St. Mary’s medical centers to Tenet Healthcare, focuses on assuring better health in Palm Beach County through community collaboration.
A Brain Coast Advisory Council formed by Palm Health includes three institutions in Jupiter: the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, the Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology and the Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute.
Also supporting it are Baptist Health South Florida, the Carl A. DeSantis Foundation, The David Minkin Foundation, and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
The Dana Foundation, based in New York City, aims to advance neuroscience that benefits society and reflects the aspirations of all people.
The 15-month grant pays for a design and discovery phase that lays the groundwork for research partnerships to continue for years. It connects residents with brain science institutions, including the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine Comprehensive Center for Brain Health in Boca Raton and Florida Atlantic University’s Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute.
Seeking rules for brain health
Abigail Goodwin, executive vice president of Palm Health Foundation, is working to turn the grant into a functioning program. She is collaborating with the UM center and FAU brain institute. She described the model as “bidirectional learning,” in which researchers inform residents and residents inform researchers.
The goal of the grant is to develop a set of simple rules for brain health, created by residents and researchers.
McNamara pointed to a trust barrier as people take to the internet to figure out what health information is trustworthy and what isn’t.
Amie Rosenfeld, the UM contact for the grant, is a physical therapist whose research focuses on dual tasking. She asks people to complete a physical task and a cognitive task, like walking and talking, at the same time.
Watching the way people walk can provide important clues about brain health, she said.
“That decrease in their gait speed is indicative of, usually, some form of dementia,” Rosenfeld said, noting a gait slowdown of more than 15% can signal cognitive change.
Brain health is one of the fastest-growing global interests, as the prevalence of dementia is soaring. The World Health Organization expects the number of people living with dementia to triple from 50 million to 152 million by 2050, due to an aging population.
Goal is to unblock science
Rosenfeld leads education and outreach for the center’s office in Boca Raton, a role that has changed from recruitment to informing residents. The 17-year research gap is real, she said.
“I think that there tends to be kind of, in the scientific community, a little bit of an ownership of information, and maybe that can be a blockage to furthering how the community understands the research findings,” Rosenfeld said.
To combat this, the center hosts free conferences open to the public, rather than limiting them to clinicians and scientists. After each event, they survey participants to gather feedback before returning to those communities again. During these events, they educate the public about the findings, but tell them how to apply meaningful change.
McNamara said success in a year includes an ongoing, active brain health network that connects residents across the county with researchers, along with developing basic rules for brain health. Goodwin added that another sign of progress is continued development and knowledge among residents.
Rosenfeld and her team say they hope to see improvements in residents’ mood, engagement and well-being, along with measurable gains in brain health knowledge through pre- and post-event surveys.
The initiative remains in its early stages, but organizers describe it as the start of a long-term shift in how brain science reaches the people it’s meant to help. With the 15-month grant, McNamara and Goodwin say they expect the work will serve as a model for other communities.
