Mahoney Lecturer Manly Discusses Community Engagement

NIA Director Dr. Richard Hodes presents the 2024 Florence Mahoney Lecture poster to guest speaker Dr. Jennifer Manly.

Dr. Jennifer Manly, a neuropsychologist who conducts research on structural and social mechanisms of inequities in cognitive aging and dementias at Columbia University Medical Center, recently delivered NIH’s annual Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA).

Also a professor at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, and the G.H. Sergievsky Center, Manly has served on NIA advisory council. Her May 8 presentation, “From Policies to pTau: Exposing Social and Structural Drivers of Alzheimer’s Disease and Opportunities for Brain Health Justice,” was part of NIA’s celebration of its 50th anniversary.

In her lecture, Manly discussed the growing global problems of dementias—not only the medical and health implications, but also the economic impact—and the need to develop successful interventions. Dementia is the fifth leading cause of death around the world, she reported.

“We must intervene to reduce the current and future burden of dementia worldwide,” Manly said. “What that means is we must identify modifiable risk factors and modifiable resilience factors.”

She also spoke about making community engagement work in scientific research and the critical importance of establishing relationships with individual populations.

The Mahoney Lecture is archived online at https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=53831.