Founded in 1991 by Dr. Kenneth Rockwood, Geriatric Medicine Research (GMR) has pioneered an interdisciplinary approach to the study of aging, frailty and dementia that has allowed us to work with artists, philosophers, linguists, sociologists, applied mathematicians and data miners, just to name a few.

Innovative work being done by the GMR team here at Dalhousie University/Capital Health  includes tools and services to allow for a more responsive system of care for aging patients, as well as work into the effects of social vulnerability on health and mortality. We have also initiated a specialized clinic to help elderly patients understand the benefits and risks of treatments available to them.

Recent work has also begun to help better understand and provide for the needs of those who care for our expanding population of dementia patients, and we currently head up a cross-Canada network for knowledge translation in the field of dementia research.

GMR has a long history of research collaborations with groups as close as Ontario and as far flung as China.  We hope you will take a minute to look explore our site, the varied work we do, and the many groups who work with us.

Check out their blog here.

The theme of the conference is “How do we promote health aging in Nova Scotia?” Our keynote speaker will be geriatrician Dr. Kenneth Rockwood,  the director of  Geriatric Medicine Research at Dalhousie University.

What is an unconference? Unlike a traditional conference, an unconference is a series of hosted conversations where ideas, information and interests can be exchanged. It lets YOU (the participants) decide what conversations you would like to engage in. You can host a conversation, and you can choose which conversations you want to participate in. The idea is to create an environment that promotes networking and exchange of ideas related to the theme of promoting healthy aging.

What does it mean to host a conversation? There is no set format for hosting your conversation. You can give a traditional slide show, you can introduce a topic you are interested in and let everyone discuss it around a table. You can sing and dance if you want! The format allows you to choose whatever way you are most comfortable with. As the host, you have chosen to start the conversation, but everyone who comes will be there because they feel they have something to offer, or want to learn more about or from the ideas of others.

What’s a suitable topic for a conversation? Anything that is of interest to you, and that falls under the general topic of promoting healthy aging in Nova Scotia.

To register online, or download a registration form to print, click here.

As part of this event, Dr. Kenneth Rockwood will be giving his annual Kathryn Allen Weldon Public Lecture on Alzheimer’s disease.

This year’s topic is “Why do people with Alzheimer’s disease have good days and bad days?”

Date:  September 27,2010

Time: 5:30pm Reception,  6:00pm Lecture

Place:  Atlantic Ballroom, Westin Nova Scotia Hotel, 1181 Hollis St, Halifax NS

All are welcome – this is a free, public lecture.

As the CBC reported, the panel expressed their doubt thus:

“We wish we could tell people that taking a pill or doing a puzzle every day would prevent this terrible disease, but current evidence doesn’t support this,” said Dr. Martha Daviglus, conference panel chair and professor of preventive medicine and medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. The panel, however, said the public needs to understand such strategies are at best only loosely associated with an improved outcome. The cause-and-effect relationship, if any, is unclear, Daviglus said.

CAKEns contacted Dr. Kenneth Rockwood, a leading researcher into dementia who currently holds the Kathryn Allen Weldon Chair in Alzheimer’s research at Dalhousie University here in Nova Scotia, for comment on this.  His response:

There is a problem with these sorts of recommendations, which rely on “the evidence”.  The evidence is biased towards pharmacological interventions, which outnumber non-pharmacological interventions by hundreds to one.  So if the experts want to wait until there are multi-hundred person randomized controlled trials before daring to recommend exercise as a useful strategy in AD, we will wait a long time.  More valuable, it seems to me, are data from cohort studies, in which people who exercise and have AD can be compared against those who do not exercise, and have AD.  Although the design of a study like this means that we can never know for sure if exercise would work in people who take it up because they have AD, the data do allow some insight. (There are also elaborate reasons why we cannot know for sure from a randomized trial if the patient in front of us will benefit either, but that is another matter.)

Our analysis of data from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging suggests that there are cognitive benefits to exercise, even in people with dementia.  The open access reference for this work is: Middleton LE, Mitnitski A, Fallah N, Kirkland SA, Rockwood K.Changes in cognition and mortality in relation to exercise in late life: a population based study. PLoS One. 2008 Sep 1;3(9):e3124.

You can read the full report form the National Institutes of Health panel here.

Left to right: Xiaowei Song, Pulin Yu, Kenneth Rockwood, Chinese Community Doctors (3), Xianghua Fang

Led in Canada by Dr. Kenneth Rockwood of the Geriatric Medicine Research Unit (GMRU) and in China by Dr. Xianghua Fang at the Beijing Institute of Geriatrics, a team of researchers are spending three years working together on issues that arise due to an aging population

The increasing proportion of elderly people presents multiple challenges for health care, and this is particularly dramatic in China where  between 2000 and 2050, the proportion of people aged 65 and older will rise from 7% to 23%, numbering more than 332 million.

There is a great amount of health data on this population  accumulated in China, but the research capacity to process and explore these data is still limited.  This collaboration makes  use of resources and skills of those at the GMRU to help advance understanding of this problem in China.

Representing the Chinese team in Canada is Shi Jing, an epidemiologist who is not only acquiring the skills to analyze the Chinese datasets, but will take these skills back with her to China at the end of her one year stay here, and pass these on to other researchers there.

The Canadian team is currently preparing for a trip to China in May, where they will make several presentations at the 3rd National Conference of the Prevention of Common Diseases in the Elderly in Yichang Hubei, May 7-9.  The China-Canada Collaboration is funded jointly by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Institute of Aging) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Submission is open to all students who plan to attend the CCSMH 4th National Conference in Halifax. Posters will be displayed throughout the conference foyer on Monday, September 27, with two time blocks dedicated to poster viewing.

The deadline for submitting your abstract is July 15, 2010 and abstracts will be considered in the following themes:

• New research findings
• Models of care & service delivery
• In-service education & training
• Health promotion & illness prevention
• Implementation of best practice guidelines
• Anti-stigma & raising awareness
• Role of the caregiver & consumer
• Knowledge transfer & exchange

See the Program-at-a-Glance for full details.

The study appointment will take approximately two and a half hours. Participants will receive a contribution toward expenses they may incur due to participation in this study and can receive an image of their brain from the MRI!

Participants are encouraged to have a family member accompany them.  Volunteers must:

1)   be older adults (ages 60 – 90)

2)   be fluent in English

3)   have normal vision OR if you are uncertain about your vision without glasses, there is a sample diagram you can try.

4)   meet all MRI safety criteria (no metal in your body except for fillings)

5)   be either cognitively healthy OR have mild Alzheimer’s Disease with no other cognitive impairments

6)   be a healthy adult meeting the criteria outlined in (1 – 4 above)

Who to Contact: Janet Marshall, Administrator (473 1850), or  Dr. Xiaowei Song, Investigator (473 1876)          

Where:

National Research Council – Institute for Biodiagnostics (Atlantic)

Neuroimaging Research Laboratory

Suite 3900, QEII Health Sciences Centre – Halifax Infirmary

January, 2009 | Version #2 | CDHA-RS/2009-287 | OREB2009-02

“What Should We Expect of Long Term Care for People with Dementia?”

Dr. Rockwood is a professor of medicine (geriatric medicine and neurology) and the Kathryn Allen Weldon Chair in Alzheimer Research at Dalhousie University here in Halifax, as well as the head of the Geriatric Medicine Research Unit.  Dr. Rockwood has published six books and more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is currently co-editor of the 7^th edition of the Brocklehurst’s Textbook of Geriatric Medicine & Gerontology. He is the principal investigator of the Canadian Dementia Knowledge Translation Network, a national, multi-centre project that aims to provide better care for people with dementia by working to put research into practice and policy.

On top of that, he’s known to always  give a very engaging talk!

Date: November 25, 2009

Place: Heritage Hall, Pier 21,  1055 Marginal Road, Halifax NS

Pre-reception: 6:30pm

Talk: 7:00pm

The lecture is open to the public and all are welcome.