During
its December 2007 meeting, the Virginia Alzheimer's
Disease and Related Disorders Commission elected
Dr. Connie Coogle
as its new Chair*.
Constance L. Coogle, Ph.D. is Associate Director
for Research in the Virginia Center on Aging at
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and
Administrator for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s
Alzheimer's and Related Diseases Research Award
Fund. She also holds joint appointments at the
rank of Associate Professor in the Departments
of Gerontology and Psychology. She is a Fellow
in the Gerontological Society of American and
has served on the Board of Directors for the
Southern Gerontological Society since 2001. Dr.
Coogle has numerous Alzheimer’s-related funded
projects, publications, and professional
presentations to her credit. She is currently
on Editorial Boards for the Journal of
Applied Gerontology and Gerontology and
Geriatrics Education.
Her research interests include a focus on
geriatric education, especially Alzheimer’s
family caregiving in rural and African American
communities and, most recently, the direct care
workforce crisis. For the last six years,
through work on five grant-funded projects, she
has been engaged in the evaluation of training
to reinforce and empower the personal care
attendants, home health aides, and nursing
assistants who continue to provide quality
“hands-on” care for older adults, with virtually
no recognition or respect, and very little
compensation.
When the Virginia Alzheimer’s Commission
AlzPossible Initiative (VACAPI) began and the
Virtual Center was first established, Dr. Coogle
chaired the Database workgroup. She was
interested in supportive funding to initiate
goal-directed discussions about the construction
and maintenance of a Virginia
clinical/demographic database. It was
anticipated that the ARDRAF would serve as a
resource for establishing a network of
collaborating investigators capable of
conducting multi-site, multi-disciplinary
research, development, and demonstration
projects. After exploring a model for this in
the state of California, the group began
investigating the current level of data
collection and information available for sharing
at the respective memory disorders and geriatric
assessment clinics across the Commonwealth. It
was anticipated that the ready availability of
demographic and service utilization information
would give rise to a variety of collaborative
research projects to confront dementia in
Virginia.
Ultimately, as a consequence of converging
goals, this effort was folded into the Research
Workgroup’s desire to build a statewide registry
of children of Alzheimer's patients.
Dr. Coogle remains interested in other Workgroup
cores under the VACAPI as well. Her
long-standing interest in Alzheimer’s caregiving
ties into the work of the VACAPI Education,
Outreach, and Information Core. Because of her
extensive experience as a volunteer with the
Greater Richmond Chapter of the Alzheimer’s
Association, she hopes to promote more
collaborative relationships between the
Commission and all of the Virginia Chapters
through the work of the Core as they continue
the on-line newsletter and webinar series for
family caregivers. She is also enthusiastic
about continuing the Services Core’s
Telemedicine Memory Disorders Clinic, staffed by
Alzheimer’s disease specialists at the
University of Virginia School of Medicine. This
mechanism has proved valuable in providing
consultative advice to physicians and other
health care workers caring for Alzheimer’s
patients throughout the state.
As chair of the Administrative Core, her
interests this year are focused on the creation
of a strategic plan and establishing bylaws for
the Commission. She hopes that this fundamental
Core will leverage, link, partner, and
coordinates the activities of the other Cores.
Dr. Coogle is committed to enabling progress
within the other Cores by providing the
resources, opportunity, and necessary means for
interaction among with the relevant programs,
services, clinics, departments, or research
laboratories throughout Virginia.
* Dr. Coogle is replacing
Dr. Russell Swerdlow.
Wish to contact Dr.
Coogle? Click here to send your message.
VIRGINIA ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE COMMISSION CHAIR