# Risk Factors for Future Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer's Disease in Older African Americans > **NIH NIH R01** · RUTGERS THE STATE UNIV OF NJ NEWARK · 2020 · $665,008 ## Abstract Although African Americans are at elevated risk for age-related cognitive decline and memory loss— with double the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) compared to white Americans—we do not sufficiently understand the causes of this health disparity, nor how to best focus future interventional efforts to remediate this health crisis among older African Americans. Stress, sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyles, poor cardiovascular fitness, depressive symptoms, high body mass, and low education are all known risk factors for cognitive decline and AD; their widespread presence among African Americans, particularly in low socioeconomic communities, suggests that some or all of these may be key to the high rates of dementia and Alzheimer's among African Americans. However, little is known about the relative importance (and interactions) among these different risk factors for AD in African Americans. Additionally, there is a dearth of data on the neural changes that occur across the lifespan in older African Americans-- especially those at highest risk for AD-- and how these relate to behavioral and lifestyle risk factors for AD. This revised R01 resubmission—including four months of pilot data from our R56 bridge award and retitled “Risk Factors for Future Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer's Disease in Older African Americans”—will address the aforementioned gaps in understanding minority health disparities in Alzheimer's disease. We will test 360 African Americans, ages 65-85, on a battery of neuropsychological, cognitive, health, fitness, genetic, and lifestyle assessments. Our sample includes 240 newly recruited participants as well as 120 legacy participants recruited during the current R56 grant. Half (180) will receive brain imaging using MRI, addressing the paucity of available neuroimaging data on older African Americans. Two aspects of our plans are especially innovative and significant to project success. First, we address barriers to African-American research participation and retention through our ten-year history of partnership, cooperation, and trust with the African-American communities of Greater Newark through Rutgers University-Newark's African American Brain Health Initiative: A University-Community Partnership (www.brainhealth.rutgers.edu). Our long-term relationships with community-based organizations have been critical to our past successes and involve year-round programs for community outreach, education, and engagement that bolster our research recruitment and retention. Many of these efforts are funded through a five-year grant to the PI from the NJ Department of Health's Office of Minority and Multicultural Health. Second, we address the need for evaluating and validating novel cognitive assessments that are sensitive to the earliest stages of prodromal Alzheimer's disease by having all participants complete the Rutgers Generalization Tasks, innovative cognitive assessments developed by the Co-I (Myers) and PI (Gluck). Th... ## Key facts - **NIH application ID:** 9898203 - **Project number:** 5R01AG053961-03 - **Recipient organization:** RUTGERS THE STATE UNIV OF NJ NEWARK - **Principal Investigator:** MARK A GLUCK - **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.) - **Funding institute:** NIH - **Fiscal year:** 2020 - **Award amount:** $665,008 - **Award type:** 5 - **Project period:** 2018-05-15 → 2023-03-31 ## Primary source NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9898203 ## Citation > US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9898203, Risk Factors for Future Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer's Disease in Older African Americans (5R01AG053961-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9898203. Licensed CC0. --- *[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*