Dr. Goldie Byrd, the Director of the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity (MACHE) at Wake Forest University School of Medicine will lead community-engaged research, outreach, recruitment, and retention efforts of a $46 million grant awarded to the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics (HIHG) at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine (UMMSM) by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This new initiative is designed to build a resource that greatly expands the representation of currently underrepresented African ancestry and Hispanic/Latinx individuals in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) genetic studies.
HIHG will lead this major five-year, international multi-site initiative with Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Columbia University (CU), Wake Forest University (WFU), the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and the University of Ibadan (UI) - lead institution for the African Dementia Consortium (AfDC).
“Increasing diversity in Alzheimer’s Disease research and clinical trials closes the disparity gap and in turn helps to close gaps in health disparities,” said Dr. Goldie Byrd. Alzheimer’s is a complex disease with a pronounced genetic component, where its estimated heritability is 60% to 80%. Though the disease can be found in individuals across a diverse group of populations, affecting almost all ethnic and ancestral groups, efforts for genetic studies historically have not been so well diversified. In fact, most genetic-based studies in AD have been performed on non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) of European ancestry, with communities of Hispanic and African ancestries largely ignored. Dr. Goldie Byrd also stated that “A large portion of our community suffers from poorer health outcomes and shorter lifespans because of social drivers, such as where they live and sleep, what they eat and do, and everyday discrimination and stress.”
Program Manager, Ms. Takiyah Starks who has worked with Dr. Goldie S. Byrd in the Alzheimer’s space for over 16 years believes this pivotal research will help lead to ground-breaking discoveries that will lead to new treatments for people with AD. It will also diversify research by including large numbers of African Americans who have been historically underrepresented in Alzheimer’s genetic studies.
For more information, or to participate in our study, please contact our study coordinators at 833-491-2817 or visit The Dawn Study at https://thedawnstudy.com/ to learn more.
About The Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity (MACHE)
MACHE is located at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston Salem North Carolina.
The Center focuses on community engagement with specific populations that have historically experienced health disparities. Our research associates and staff conduct independent research and collaborate with faculty across the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and beyond.
Vision
The center’s vision is to be nationally known as a preeminent health equity center that reduces health disparities in the most underserved populations.
Mission
Its mission is to dismantle systemic inequity and support the health of communities through:
- Building and nurturing mutually beneficial and reciprocal relationships
- Respecting and honoring community as experts and equal partners
- Engaging, educating, and empowering communities
- Cultivating formal and informal leadership
- Creating a culture of transparency and fairness in research
- Promoting advocacy and policy change