Virginia Alzheimer's Disease Center
The Virginia Alzheimer's Disease Center (VADC) is advancing dementia research by knitting the community together through focused research collaborations. Scientists, caregivers, and persons with dementia are collaborating to improve our understanding of the aging brain. The VADC is committed to serving all individuals, with increased efforts toward addressing the needs of underserved and marginalized populations. With the help of world-class experts and cutting-edge technology to collect, store, and extract data, our collected information is readily accessible and available across the ADC ecosystem. We are building advanced methods into the "DNA backbone" of our research to accomplish our goals of reducing health disparities and improving our global community's quality of life.
Over 5.8 million Americans live with dementia and this number is only expected to increase. Providing essential care to these Americans are 16 million caregivers (typically family members) who sacrifice their time and energy and even their health to provide over 18.5 billion hours of unpaid care each year. Caregivers are critical to the nation's dementia care system, as they have the potential to slow the decline of their loved ones with dementia. However, this does not come without a cost. Caregivers are more likely to have poorer quality of life and more markers of poor health than non-caregivers. For these reasons, the Virginia Alzheimer's Disease Center is committed to improving outcomes and disorder trajectories for persons with dementia and their caregivers.