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Upcoming Events
Our next webinar, Why and How a Behavioral Intervention Works: A Panel Discussion Exploring Mechanisms, will be held on May 20, 2026.
This panel discussion, led by the Establishing Mechanisms of Benefit to Reinforce the Alzheimer’s Care Experience (EMBRACE) AD/ADRD Roybal Executive Committee, explores the ins and outs of mechanisms, particularly within the context of dementia care interventions. The webinar will coincide with the release of a guidance document on mechanisms written by Drs. Hodgson and Gitlin (the Co-Leads of the EMBRACE Behavioral and Intervention Development Core). The panel will focus on the importance of understanding mechanisms that enable the successful translation of interventions across contexts and populations. Using helpful examples, the presenters will consider how to define, identify, and measure mechanisms. Panelists will discuss common theoretical frameworks and terminology used in the dissemination of mechanistic research and will provide tools to facilitate this work.
Panelists will include the EMBRACE directors, Joseph E. Gaugler, Ph.D. (University of Minnesota) and Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi, PhD, RN (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and EMBRACE Behavioral Intervention Development Core Co-Leads, Laura N. Gitlin, PhD, FGSA, FAAN (Drexel University) and Nancy A. Hodgson, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA (University of Pennsylvania).
Joseph E. Gaugler, PhD is the Robert L. Kane Endowed Chair in Long-Term Care & Aging in the Division of Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. He is also director of the Center on Aging and the Director of the Establishing Mechanisms of Benefit to Enhance the Alzheimer’s Research Care Experience (EMBRACE) AD/ADRD Roybal Center (with Dr. Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi). Gaugler’s research examines the sources and effectiveness of long-term care for persons with Alzheimer’s disease and other chronic conditions.
Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor in the BerbeeWalsh Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, where she also serves as Vice Chair for Research and The John and Tashia Morgridge Chair of Emergency Medicine Research. Dr. Gilmore-Bykovskyi also serves as Co-Director of the Establishing Mechanisms of Benefit to Reinforce the Alzheimer’s Care Experience (EMBRACE) AD/ADRD Roybal Center, Lead for the High Risk Populations and Disparities Core with the NIH-funded IMPACT Collaboratory, Deputy Director of the UW–Madison Center for Health Disparities Research (CHDR), and Co-Lead for the University of Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) Care Research Core.
Laura N. Gitlin, PhD, FGSA, FAAN, an applied research sociologist, is the dean emerita of the College of Nursing and Health Professions at Drexel University. Gitlin is nationally and internationally recognized for her research on developing, evaluating and implementing novel home and community-based interventions that improve quality of life of persons with dementia and their family caregivers, enhance daily function of older adults with disability and address mental health disparities. She is a well-funded researcher, having received continuous research and training grants from federal agencies and private foundations for over 35 years.
Nancy A. Hodgson, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA is the Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor in Nursing and Chair and Professor of the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences at University of Pennsylvania. She has served as Principal Investigator on multiple completed trials where she rigorously evaluated interventions for persons with dementia and their family caregivers in home and community settings. Her multi-method expertise spans qualitative research, behavioral intervention development (including technology-based solutions), clinical trials, and implementation science. Her research is grounded in the Science of Behavior Change and the NIH stage model, prioritizing the understanding of mechanisms across all stages of dementia.
Recorded Webinars
Jeffrey Birk, PhD, MS, is an Assistant Professor of Medical Science at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He is an affective psychologist with a background in psychophysiology and emotion regulation. Dr. Birk’s research examines psychological factors and health behaviors in cardiovascular patient populations, including cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome. He has developed mechanism-focused interventions to reduce psychological distress in cardiac patients after acute medical events.
This presentation introduces a resource designed to guide researchers how to conduct rigorous mechanism-focused research in a step-by-step manner across multiple study designs. This tool was developed as part of the Science Of Behavior Change initiative. The webinar describes the rationale for mechanism-focused research and the importance of properly measuring the mechanisms that are believed to underlie the potential efficacy of interventions. It details how CLIMBR can inform the development, implementation, reporting, and evaluation of mechanism-focused research across a broad range of study designs.
Download webinar slides: Birk-EMBRACE-Webinar-2025.pdf
David L. Roth, PhD, MA, is a Professor Emeritus of Geriatric Medicine and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University. He was trained as a clinical psychologist and has considerable expertise as an applied statistician, with over 40 years of experience as an NIH-funded investigator. In addition to his collaborative contributions, Dr. Roth served as a Principal Investigator on multiple R01 grants that examined the health effects (and benefits) of family caregiving using data from large national epidemiological investigations. Although Dr. Roth retired from his full-time academic position in 2024, he continues to be an active scholar and serves as a consultant on multiple funded projects, including the EMBRACE Roybal Center. He has a long history of collaboration with EMBRACE Center leaders.
This presentation introduces investigators to key decisions that must be made when testing intervention mechanistic hypotheses with statistical mediation methods. Topics include whether change scores or post-treatment scores should be analyzed, how baseline (pre-treatment) measures should be used as covariates, the importance of selecting mediating variables with very high reliabilities, and the availability of multiple methods for testing the statistical significance of and interpreting the magnitude of the mediated effect.
Download webinar slides: Roth-EMBRACE-Webinar-2025.pdf
Heather Allore, PhD, has been at Yale since 2000. Her research is focused on issues related to the design and analysis of trials and studies of multifactorial geriatric health conditions, especially among persons with Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementia. Several projects focus upon health disparities of older adults. She developed a sub-discipline of biostatistics that focuses on training and methodological development in geriatrics called “Gerontologic Biostatistics.” This discipline trains biostatisticians for conducting collaborative research with clinical investigators in geriatrics and gerontology and provides the basis for the development of new statistical methodologies. She has developed a website that aids those interested in aging research, including those familiar with analytic methods and those getting familiar with these methods.
Guangyu Tong, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and Biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health. He directs the Cardiovascular Medicine Analytics Center (CMAC), which supports study design and analytics across Yale’s cardiovascular research community. His research spans cardiovascular medicine, pragmatic trial methodology, implementation science methods, Bayesian statistics, and causal inference, with contributions to NIH-funded trials and global health studies. Dr. Tong holds faculty affiliations with interdisciplinary initiatives in implementation science, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV prevention, and firearm injury prevention. He also serves as Statistical Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).
This presentation describes the concept of a dose in behavioral and social interventions. We cover challenges in determining optimal dose in behavioral and social interventions with single and multicomponent interventions and in the context of heterogeneity. We provide an overview of approaches for testing doses and components including descriptive, inferential, and adaptive designs. Lastly, we present a real-world dementia intervention and implications for research.
Download webinar slides: Allore-Tong-EMBRACE-Webinar-2025
The Next Caregiving Challenge: Assisted Living Placement of a Person Living with Dementia Session 1
The Next Caregiving Challenge: Assisted Living Placement of a Person Living with Dementia Session 2
The Next Caregiving Challenge: Assisted Living Placement of a Person Living with Dementia Session 3
Dr. Fang Yu, PhD, RN, GNP-BC, FGSA, FAAN, is Professor, Edson Chair in Dementia Translational Nursing Science, and Director of ASU Roybal Center for Older Adults Living Alone with Cognitive Decline at Arizona State University Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation. Dr. Yu’s research focuses on developing exercise and cognitive interventions to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease. Her research findings have led to many peer-reviewed papers, a book titled Alzheimer’s Rx: Aerobic Exercise (Use the Approach AD S.A.F.E.ly™ Protocol to Engage Purposefully), and the FIT-AD™ Certificate Program to increase exercise access for people with AD.
Dr. Joseph E. Gaugler, Ph.D., is the Robert L. Kane Endowed Chair in Long-Term Care & Aging in the Division of Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. He is also director of the Center on Aging and the Director of the Establishing Mechanisms of Benefit to Enhance the Alzheimer’s Research Care Experience (EMBRACE) AD/ADRD Roybal Center (with Dr. Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi). Gaugler’s research examines the sources and effectiveness of long-term care for persons with Alzheimer’s disease and other chronic conditions.
This collaborative presentation serves as an introduction to the EMBRACE Roybal Center and the ASU Roybal Center. The ASU Roybal Center supports clinical trials of MoBC-driven, technology-enabled interventions that delay ADRD and improve quality of life in older adults living alone with cognitive decline. The EMBRACE Roybal Center offers robust support to advance research capacity for mechanistic-based home and community-based dementia care intervention trials.
The presentation focuses on providing tips for developing and submitting grant proposals for dementia care science. Dr. Gaugler and Dr. Yu share grant application best practices, particularly for proposals focused on mechanistic research.
Download webinar slides: Gaugler-Yu-EMBRACE-Webinar-2026