# Resilience, cultural alignment, and social support in brain aging: Data from the Strong Heart Study

> **NIH NIH R01** · WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $521,320

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
When life stresses are especially intense, chronic, or overwhelming, deleterious health effects can occur,
including inflammation, cardiovascular disease, disability, depression, low quality of life, and dementia. In this
context, resilience can be defined as the ability to maintain a healthy aging trajectory despite adverse conditions
of stress. American Indians (AI) have a unique history and ongoing experience of trauma and disparities in
environmental and socioeconomic conditions, which amplify daily stresses and contribute to health risks. Despite
these adverse circumstances, remarkable resilience has been described in AI populations. Recent work by our
group suggests that social support and alignment with Native culture correlate with lower levels of stress,
negativity, anger, hostility, depression, mortality, and cardiovascular disease. However, our findings on cultural
alignment are limited, and none has yet explored associations of resilience and social support. It remains an
open question whether neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and related dementias
(ADRD) can result from chronic stress, or whether individual psychosocial characteristics such as resilience can
mediate such risk. We propose to address these knowledge gaps by efficiently leveraging an existing effort
funded by the NHLBI in the Strong Heart Study, a longitudinal cohort of AI adults from 13 tribal communities
across the US. The existing contract covers recruitment, consenting, and basic clinical examination of 3,000
eligible participants in 2022-2024; we propose to augment the limited protocol by administering additional
psychosocial and neuropsychological instruments on resilience, social support, cultural identity and alignment,
and cognition. Our Specific Aims are to: describe associations of individual resilience among AI adults with
identity and self-regard, social support, and cultural alignment, by age and sex; evaluate resilience, social
support, and cultural features in relation to ADRD; and use machine learning to develop explanatory models of
resilience and dementia. Our study has the potential to advance epidemiologic knowledge of modifiable
psychosocial conditions in a vulnerable, underserved population, and consequently to offer a clearer picture of
the relative contributions of psychosocial, behavioral, interpersonal, and socioeconomic factors related to ADRD.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10126397
- **Project number:** 1R01AG070822-01
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Astrid M Suchy-Dicey
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $521,320
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-30 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10126397

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10126397, Resilience, cultural alignment, and social support in brain aging: Data from the Strong Heart Study (1R01AG070822-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10126397. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*