Kalisha Johnson
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
African American older adults are more than twice as likely as non-Latinx White older adults to develop Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Most of their caregivers are adult daughters.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
African American
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- 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.
- Describe how members of African American parent–adult daughter dementia dyads make decisions about current and future formal care, and how these processes affect both members' quality of life, using mixed methods.
- Design and test the feasibility of a culturally tailored prototype intervention, built with intervention mapping and design thinking, that helps dementia dyads and families plan formal care decisions.
More about the research
These families must decide whether and when to use formal care, meaning paid care services usually tied to a healthcare institution. Formal care is linked to better quality of life, but African American caregivers often use up informal help first. No structured program guides these families through the decision, and caregivers report that formal care is not tailored to their culture.
Why it matters
African American families caring for a parent with dementia could gain a structured, culturally tailored way to make decisions about formal care. This could improve quality of life for both people with dementia and their daughter caregivers and help reduce the racial health disparities linked to formal care use.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Manka Nkimbeng
University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Explore the experiences and care strategies of high-risk New American older adults with dementia and their informal family caregivers.
Lee Lindquist
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Track how aging-in-place and long-term care plans change over 84 months in a cohort of 293 older adults who used PlanYourLifespan.org, examining the roles of cognition, physical function, family and environment.
David Hancock
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
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.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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