The Michigan Daily recently published an article about the termination of a grant that sought to reinterview the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) to assess cognitive functioning and dementia risk. The grant, which is led by co-PI’s Briana Mezuk and Toni Antonucci, was terminated in March on the grounds of ‘no longer effectuat[ing] agency priorities,’ despite dementia research and prevention being a cornerstone of NIH’s scientitfic agenda. The NSAL is the largest nationally-representative survey of Black Americans to date and has been an essential tool for researchers studying the health and wellbeing of Black and lower-income White Americans. This study was an urgently-needed opportunity to generate novel data on cognitive outcomes among Black Americans, who are twice as likely as White patients to develop dementia.

The article, written by Grace Schuur, provides an essential overview of the study and features interviews from Dr. Mezuk, Dr. Antonucci, and PhD students Eskira Kahsay and Cheyenne Garcia on the human and scientific cost of the termination. You can read the full article here.