Lunchbox Lecture with Dr. Renzi-Hammond: “Changing how rural Georgia understands, prevents, and diagnoses neurodegenerative disease”

REGISTRATION REQUIRED – Sign up via the Honors Network

Please join us for an Honors Lunchbox Lecture on Thursday, September 29, with Dr. Lisa Renzi-Hammond, Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Behavior. She will be presenting “From the classroom to the community: Changing how rural Georgia understands, prevents, and diagnoses neurodegenerative disease.”

Alzheimer’s disease is forecast to be one of the most expensive public health problems in the United States by 2050. Although most of the healthcare providers who diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias live in metropolitan areas, rural adults tend to be older, have less educational attainment, more obesity, poor diet quality, more poverty, and other risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. The University of Georgia is the state’s flagship land-and sea-grant university, with a mandate to serve all of Georgia’s 159 counties. In this discussion, you will learn about the Cognitive Aging Research and Education (CARE) initiative, housed in the College of Public Health, and involving 13 departments and academic units on campus. The CARE initiative aims to provide brain health education, improved access to diagnosis through digital technologies, and support for persons caregiving for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, particularly in rural and medically underserved communities.

Dr. Renzi-Hammond specializes in lifespan sensory, cognitive, and neurological development. She is interested in the functional relationships between underlying brain structure, sensory integrity, plasticity, cognitive function and risk for disease, and the behaviors that promote cognitive vitality across the lifespan. Dr. Renzi-Hammond is the director of UGA’s Institute of Gerontology and the co-director of the Cognitive Aging Research and Education (CARE) Center.

The lecture will be held on Thursday, September 29 from 12:30-1:20pm in 102 Moore Hall. Please make sure to arrive on time. Attendance is limited to the first 28 students who RSVP. Lunch from Barberitos is provided.

To register, sign up on the Honors network under “Events.” The Honors network student login page is here: https://honors.uga.edu/network/student.

Contact: Kora Burton, [email protected]