The Nevada Vital Aging Initiative: A private‐public partnership to study early predictors of dementia

Plans are underway in Nevada to conduct a comprehenive, statewide initiative that will identify people at risk for ementia, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), or other memory disrders. The Nevada Vital Aging (NVA) Initiative will enroll s many as 12,000 volunteers older than 45 years in Nevada uring the next 5 years for the long-term exploration of actors that lead to memory problems ranging from mild emory loss to dementia. At a September 2006 think tank orkshop convened by Keep Memory Alive, the foundation or the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute of Las Vegas, Nevada, a roup of researchers and clinicians who specialize in AD or n conducting large-scale observational trials met to begin esigning the Initiative, which is expected to begin enrollng volunteers in the summer of 2007. Spearheading this Initiative is Zaven S. Khachaturian, hD, former Director of the Office of Alzheimer’s Disease esearch at the National Institutes of Health and now the resident and chief executive officer of Keep Memory live. Leon Thal, MD, and Lewis Kuller, MD, DrPH, o-chair the initiative. Thal heads the Alzheimer’s Disease esearch Center at the University of California, San Diego; uller is a professor of epidemiology at the University of ittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Other particpants at the workshop included Keith Bowman, MD, John reitner, MD, MPH, Denis Evans, MD, Lindsey Farrer, hD, Richard Frank, MD, Walter Kukull, PhD, Javier Nito, MD, PhD, Ronald Petersen, PhD, MD, Mark Sager, D, and Paul Scherr, PhD, DSc. These scientists and cliicians will form the core advisory group for the Initiative. lso participating in the workshop were John A. McDonald,