David Hancock
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
More than one in ten older adults experiences elder mistreatment, meaning abuse or neglect by someone they trust, and rates are higher among people living with dementia. Most dementia care is given by unpaid family members and friends, more than 11 million of them for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD).
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
elder mistreatment
elder abuse
dementia caregiving
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Develop and refine candidate items for the EM-AD, a new measure of elder mistreatment tailored to dementia family caregivers, using feedback from caregivers and geriatric professionals to establish that the items cover the right content.
- Pilot test the newly written mistreatment items with dementia caregivers, and use the results to decide which items make up the final measure.
- Validate the psychometric properties of the new measure, meaning how reliably and accurately it captures elder mistreatment among caregivers of people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
- Estimate the prevalence and incidence of elder mistreatment among dementia caregivers, and identify correlates and predictors that could become targets for future interventions.
More about the research
Caregiving can be rewarding, but it also brings burden and distress. Little research has looked at mistreatment within these caregiving relationships, partly because no measure exists that fits the experiences of dementia caregivers and the people they care for. Without a good measure, it is hard to know how common mistreatment is or how to prevent it.
Why it matters
Older adults with dementia and the family members who care for them could benefit from a reliable way to detect mistreatment in their relationships. A validated measure could show how often mistreatment happens among ADRD caregivers. It could also point to the factors linked to it, which would give a basis for designing interventions and policies that reduce mistreatment and support caregiver well-being.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ronald Acierno
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Psychology
Select and support two to three pilot projects each year that develop behavioral interventions for elder mistreatment at stages 0–2 of the NIH Stage Model for Behavioral Intervention Development.
Laura Mosqueda
University of Southern California, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Develop and feasibility-test a brief evidence-based Risk Assessment Screen that primary care clinics can use to identify care partners of people living with dementia who are at risk of inflicting elder mistreatment.
Kalisha Johnson
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Examine how behavioral, sociocultural and environmental factors shape formal care decisions and quality of life among African American people living with dementia and their adult daughter caregivers, using dyadic data analysis.
The school
Weill Medical College of Cornell University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 59 research doctorates a year.
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