Boston University Launches $2.8 Million Research Hub to Tackle Alzheimer’s Inequities
A new Boston University research center will bring together epidemiologists, demographers, sociologists, economists, data scientists, and policy experts to investigate why Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias affect some populations more severely than others. The Boston University-Quantitative Population Science and Healthy Cognitive Aging Research Program, or BU-SHARP, will receive $2.8 million from the National Institute on Aging and is scheduled to launch in fall 2026. The initiative will become the 18th NIA-supported center in a national network designed to strengthen population-based research on dementia and cognitive aging.
The center will be led by Maria Glymour, chair and professor of epidemiology at Boston University’s School of Public Health; Andrew Stokes, associate professor of global health at the School of Public Health; and Deborah Carr, Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts & Sciences. Their research program will focus on the demographic, social, economic, and environmental forces that shape cognitive health across the life course. The researchers aim to move beyond studies that identify individual risk factors and instead examine how those factors interact with communities, institutions, public policies, and changing social conditions.
The need for this approach is becoming increasingly urgent. Federal estimates indicate that the number of people living with dementia in the United States could rise sharply by 2060, as population aging increases the number of individuals at risk. Although Alzheimer’s disease develops through complex biological processes, evidence increasingly suggests that health behaviors and social exposures may influence when symptoms begin and how rapidly disability progresses. Factors such as cardiovascular health, education, income, housing, social isolation, access to medical care, and exposure to chronic stress may affect cognitive aging over several decades rather than at a single point in adulthood.
“This center will connect researchers across BU who have shared interests in ADRD and aging to understand how we can slow the onset and progression of ADRD over time,” Glymour says. She will lead BU-SHARP’s Administrative and Research Support Core. Her work examines how social conditions across the life course influence cognitive functioning, including the possibility that experiences occurring early in life may alter vulnerability to dementia many years later. Because Alzheimer’s pathology can begin decades before a clinical diagnosis, studying only the period immediately before diagnosis can obscure the causes of disease and exaggerate the apparent importance of late-life factors.
BU-SHARP will concentrate on three connected areas of research. The first will examine the onset, progression, and consequences of dementia among people with disabilities, underserved rural communities, and other populations that experience disproportionate burdens. The second will investigate social stressors and related dynamics that may contribute to cognitive decline throughout the lifespan. The third will ask how those influences can be changed through health interventions, social programs, environmental improvements, or public policy. Researchers will use longitudinal studies, administrative records, survey data, and other underused datasets to analyze patterns over time while addressing technical challenges such as missing data, selection bias, measurement error, and differences in diagnostic access.
Those methodological problems are central to dementia research. People who receive an Alzheimer’s diagnosis may differ from undiagnosed individuals not only in their underlying cognitive health but also in their access to physicians, insurance coverage, transportation, family support, and specialty care. As a result, researchers must distinguish between biological differences in disease and social differences in detection. Longitudinal and causal-inference methods can help investigators estimate whether a particular exposure is associated with dementia, whether it actually contributes to disease, and whether changing it could reduce risk. BU-SHARP plans to provide technical assistance and methodological resources to researchers who may not otherwise have access to advanced expertise in these areas.
The center will also create a pipeline for early-career investigators. Planned activities include pilot grants for innovative small-scale studies, mentorship, office hours for data and analytic support, and a national meeting series where researchers can workshop projects and receive detailed feedback. A research translation program will train students to communicate findings about dementia to wider audiences through partnerships with Boston University’s Public Health Post and the College of Arts & Sciences’ Social Science Summer Writing Internship Program. The goal is to ensure that scientifically rigorous findings can reach clinicians, community organizations, journalists, and policymakers in a form that supports informed action.
Stokes, who will lead BU-SHARP’s Communication and Dissemination Core, says dementia research must be designed with its eventual users in mind. “ADRD researchers often lack the training and support they need to strategically disseminate their work and reach the policymakers and practitioners who could act on them,” he says. The center will therefore treat communication and translation as part of the research process rather than as a final step. This may include identifying which populations are represented in a study, explaining the limits of observational evidence, and presenting statistical results in ways that clarify both the potential benefits and uncertainties of prevention strategies.
Carr will lead the Pilot Core, which will support interdisciplinary projects linking behavioral science, public health, economics, sociology, law, and biomedical research. She argues that the wide-ranging effects of dementia require more than a single disciplinary perspective. Dementia can alter employment, household finances, caregiving responsibilities, housing stability, family relationships, and end-of-life decisions. Understanding those consequences may reveal intervention points that are invisible in studies focused exclusively on brain pathology. “Creating a pipeline of methodologically sophisticated researchers with deep knowledge of ADRD—spanning multiple disciplines—will be key in advancing knowledge,” Carr says.
Several additional Boston University faculty members will serve as coinvestigators, including Jennifer Weuve, Tal Gross, and Christopher Robertson. Weuve will contribute expertise in epidemiological methods through Methods in Longitudinal Research on Dementia, an initiative devoted to improving approaches for identifying the causes of dementia and cognitive decline. She is also involved in BU Scholars for Quantitative Interdisciplinary Aging Research, a five-year, $2.1 million NIA-funded training program for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. Together, BU-SHARP and the training program will give emerging scientists opportunities to use advanced data sources, apply quantitative methods, and study the social and biological factors that influence healthy aging. The center is inviting researchers at Boston University and elsewhere, including scholars new to dementia research, to participate as its website and mailing list become available.
Subject of Research: Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, healthy cognitive aging, dementia prevention, health inequities, population science, and interdisciplinary research training.
Article Title: Boston University Launches $2.8 Million Research Hub to Tackle Alzheimer’s Inequities
News Publication Date: Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Web References: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/risk-future-burden-dementia-united-states; https://www.nia.nih.gov/; https://reporter.nih.gov/search/WOsWX5ngF0WPyVjUwOBBPw/project-details/11258134; https://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/maria-glymour/; https://www.bu.edu/sph/profile/andrew-stokes/; https://www.bu.edu/sociology/profile/deborah-carr/; https://sites.bu.edu/melodem/; https://publichealthpost.org/
References: National Institute on Aging; Boston University School of Public Health; Boston University College of Arts & Sciences; Methods in Longitudinal Research on Dementia; BU Scholars for Quantitative Interdisciplinary Aging Research.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, ADRD, cognitive aging, public health, epidemiology, demography, health disparities, population health, prevention, longitudinal research, social determinants of health, aging populations, research collaboration.
