Katrina Walsemann
University of Maryland, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology
Education is one of the strongest protections against Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, the brain diseases that steal memory and thinking in later life. Yet older Americans went to very different schools depending on when and where they were born and on their race.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Social Science
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
cognitive impairment
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Build the Education Contextual Data Resource (ECDR), a long-term record of state and local school conditions such as per-pupil spending and segregation, describing what Black and White older adults experienced across birth cohorts.
- Test whether education lowers dementia risk differently when attained under more or less advantaged school conditions, by linking the ECDR to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) of U.S. adults over 50.
- Examine whether life-course pathways, including occupation, marriage, health behaviors and health, explain the links between school contexts and cognitive impairment, and whether this differs by educational attainment.
- Relate state-level differences in the timing and extent of court-ordered school desegregation to cognitive impairment among Black and White older adults schooled in the U.S. South.
- Build shared data and statistical support for population aging research across three institutions in the Southern Population Aging Research Center (SPARC), with a focus on regional differences and health disparities.
More about the research
This was especially true for Black adults who grew up in the segregated U.S. South. The work asks how these early-life school settings, together with geography and social conditions, shape healthy aging. It also builds research support for population aging studies across the South.
Why it matters
Identifying which groups of older adults face the highest dementia risk, and how unequal schooling contributed to that risk, could help target prevention and explain racial gaps in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. A shared data resource on historical school conditions could support further research on early-life risk factors. Center infrastructure in the U.S. South aims to produce actionable knowledge on healthy aging for older populations in the region.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Chandra L Muller
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Social Science
Estimate how much high school experiences, such as advanced coursework, grades and degrees, shape cognitive, blood-based and behavioral markers of dementia risk at age 70 in the NLS-72 cohort.
Laura B Zahodne
University of Michigan, MI·Psychology
Follow MCAP participants for a third assessment and expand the cohort, then use latent growth curve modeling to test whether neighborhood socioeconomic status predicts differences in cognitive decline between Black and White older adults.
Lisa Berkman
Harvard University, MA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Continue following the HAALSI Agincourt cohort of older South Africans for 13 years, adding a third HCAP wave with biomarkers and neuroimaging to study how dementia interacts with HIV and cardiometabolic disorders.
The school
University of Maryland: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 602 research doctorates a year.
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