2024-2025 Impact Report

An ADRC-funded research study at USU recently examined the impact of Compassion Compass, an asynchronous single-session digital mental health intervention for adults who have received a dementia diagnosis. The program was created as a collaboration between the ADRC, Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice (IDRPP), and the Department of Psychology at USU. It teaches skills from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT), which incorporates acceptance, mindfulness, and values-based strategies to promote mental health and wellbeing. Although ACT interventions have been shown to be effective at improving quality of life and reducing psychological distress among other groups, a single-session online training had not yet been developed or tested among individuals with dementia. The Compassion Compass program aims to teach skills to help individuals better navigate their emotional responses to a dementia diagnosis.

Heather Kelley, principal investigator and researcher at the IDRPP, said, “Our goal was to see if a self-guided, online program could really make a difference for people with dementia. Will they enroll, will they like the program, and will it improve their quality of life and mental health?”

In the study, 18 people who had received a dementia diagnosis in the past year completed the Compassion Compass program and then participated in follow-up surveys and an-depth interview. Participants consistently reported positive changes in emotional awareness and regulation, self-compassion, understanding and accepting diagnosis, connection to self-identified values, and behaviors. Ninety-four percent of participants said they found the program helpful.

“The program’s accessible format and ACT-based skills make it a promising approach to help address the gaps in emotional support for people with dementia,” said Kelley. “With continued research, it is possible that Compassion Compass can be easily integrated into healthcare contexts in a cost-effective manner to provide a meaningful support to adults going through this life-changing diagnosis.”

USU Biological Engineers Study the Amyloid Protein, Found in Both Alzheimer’s Disease and Macular Degeneration

Elizabeth Vargis, associate professor of biological engineering at USU, and her research team were awarded an ADRC-funded pilot grant to study how natural parts of aging contribute to the development of retinal diseases, such as macular degeneration. Their research studies the amyloid protein, which is found in both Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration. By better understanding how amyloid deposits in the tissue of the eye, their work may increase understanding of amyloid deposits in the brain.

“The overall objective of the project was to model how normal aspects of aging affect the development of age-related disease,” explained Dillon Weatherston, doctoral student in the Department of Biological Engineering at USU and a key member of Vargis’s research group. “By exploring how aging affects cellular behavior in the retina, we hope to better understand how age-related diseases progress, which will help with Alzheimer’s disease detection and treatment.”
The researchers emphasized how vital the ADRC’s support has been. “Because of this funding, we were able to get real results,” said Vargis. “The impact on our student researchers and on science has been tremendous.”

To extend the work, the team will publish the results and seek additional nationally funded grants.

“As we explore aging from the retinal side, we will compare it to studies on the brain and continue to clarify how Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration are connected. As we better understand this connection, I hope that we can develop better and earlier treatments for both diseases,” said Weatherston. “If markers of Alzheimer’s disease can be easily detected in the retina prior to any symptoms in the brain, people could take steps to preserve their brain health after a simple and non-invasive eye exam.”

ADRC Pilot Grant Supports Larger NIH Funding to Examine Alzheimer’s Disease Among Pacific Islanders

Preliminary data acquired from a 2022 ADRC-funded pilot grant has been used to help secure a five-year grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health to Perry Ridge, Ph.D., professor of bioinformatics and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. Ridge collaborated closely with JoAnn Tschanz, Ph.D., clinical neuropsychologist and professor in the Psychology Department at Utah State University, on the pilot study with their respective research teams. The pilot aimed to augment the Cache County Memory Study (CCMS) population database with a Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islander sample. Data on this specific population are sparse. Pilot grants, or smaller studies, provide the initial proof-of-concept required in large federal grant proposals.

Ridge’s team reviewed the preliminary data and found that the biology of Alzheimer’s disease appears to be different in Pacific Islanders compared to other racial and ethnic groups that have been more thoroughly studied. “Our data suggest two important things,” Ridge explained. “First, the most prominent genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease in white people is not involved in dementia in Pacific Islanders. Second, blood-based biomarkers that are now the gold standard for Alzheimer’s diagnosis in white people do not appear to be predictive of disease status in Pacific Islanders.”

His team aims now to determine whether existing diagnostics are accurate in Pacific Islanders and to develop new diagnostic methods, or refine existing ones, if needed. Also, they will determine if disease markers that were identified in individuals of European descent are also markers of disease in Pacific Islanders and identify disease markers that are specific to Pacific Islanders. Finally, the team will work to determine what happens to brain morphology (i.e., shape and size) in Pacific Islanders who have Alzheimer’s disease compared to those who don’t.

Next steps include recruiting 5,000 Pacific Islanders over the next five years, conducting thorough neuropsychological assessments, collecting genome data for genetic analyses and information about lifestyle and medical histories, and biobanking blood and plasma for future studies.