1. < Home

Let’s Talk Brain Health Spring 2025

Start to Shape the Future of Alzheimer’s Treatment for Your Loved Ones and Community

After decades of clinical trials, the past two years have witnessed the introduction of new FDA-approved therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

These therapies (lecanemab and donanemab) work by enlisting the body’s natural defenses (i.e., immune system) to attack and clear a protein called beta-amyloid (Aβ) from the brain. Aβ can build up in the brain for many years before the first memory loss symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease begin to show. These new therapies effectively clear Aβ from the brains of people with early AD and slows further cognitive decline.

SPRING 2025

In This Issue

  • START Treatment Study
  • Sleep & Brain Health
  • Meet a Community Champion
  • Meet an ADRC Team Member
  • What's Cooking?
  • Community Pages
  • Calendar of Events
  • Dementia Connection

Now, a promising new way to treat Alzheimer’s has also been developed. Unlike lecanemab or donanemab, this new therapy does not use the body’s immune system. Rather than clearing Aβ from the brain, this new medication, called ‘CT1812’ for now, forms a barrier that protects brain cells from damage caused by Aβ plaques.

Mayo Clinic is part of a nationwide clinical trial to evaluate how well this new medication can slow or halt AD progression. The trial is called the Synaptic Therapy Alzheimer’s Research Trial (START).

START participants will receive either medication or a placebo (inactive treatment for 18 months, in the form of 2 capsules taken once a day. Neither the participant nor the investigator will know if they are receiving active or inactive medication.

Joining a clinical treatment trial like START is an important step towards a future of equitable AD therapies. We invite the community to take this step with us. We are committed to sharing information transparently, answering questions clearly, and overcoming barriers so that all communities can benefit equally from our research findings.

START participants must be 50-85 years old with mild memory loss due to Alzheimer’s Disease. They must be able to come to Mayo Clinic for study visits, which will include free brain health assessments. A study partner who can attend Clinic visits, provide information about the participant, and ensure the medication is taken as prescribed is also required.

If you would like to learn more, please contact the Mayo ADRC at (904)953-6523.

The Night Shift: Sleeping Your Way to a Healthier Brain

Sleep isn't just rest; it's active brain care. Good quality sleep is essential for healthy brain aging because
sleep is the time when our brains take care of housekeeping and maintenance. Here's how it works:

Keep reading for some quick tips to help achieve better quality sleep:

  • Set up a routine. Try to go to bed and wake up at the same times each day.
  • Wind down. About 30–60 minutes before bed, do something relaxing: read, stretch, listen to calm music. This signals your brain it's time to slow down.
  • Limit stimulants. Caffeine and nicotine can make it harder to sleep. Limit use of these substances, especially in the late afternoon and evenings.
  • Limit screens. Blue light from phones, tablets, and TVs messes with your sleep hormone and can throw off your sleep cycle. Try to unplug 1 hour before bed. If you wake during the night, try not to turn on screens.
  • Move more during the day. Walks and other physical activities can help improve sleep at night.
  • Set a peaceful mood in the evening. Keep the room cool, dark, and quiet to promote better sleep.
  • Limit alcohol and big meals late at night. Although these things can make you feel drowsy quickly, they interfere with your ability to get into deep sleep stages, where brain cell restoration occurs.
  • Consult your physician. Be sure to let your doctor know if you're having trouble sleeping, especially if you snore, wake up feeling tired, or nod off during the day. Certain medical conditions, sleep disorders, or medication side effects may be contributing to the problem. Your doctor can also order a sleep evaluation, if needed.

Meet a Community Champion

Mr. Kenneth Reddick

The saying “If you want something done, ask a busy person" is attributed to Benjamin Franklin. The quote suggests that busy people are good at managing their time and getting things done efficiently. The quote also applies quite well to this issue’s community champion, Mr. Kenneth Reddick. Luckily, Mr. Reddick wasn’t too busy to sit down with us and answer some questions about himself and his passion for helping his community.

Hi Mr. Reddick! Will you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m a lifelong resident of Jacksonville, attending James Weldon Johnson and Stanton before heading to college at Howard University in Washington, DC. After 3 years at Howard, I enlisted in the US Air Force at Langley Air Force base and completed my degree at Hampton University. After leaving the military, my wife and I returned to Jacksonville. I was hired by Stockton, Whatley and Davin, a billion-dollar real estate company, and was the first African-American in their Management Training Program as a Loan Administrator. Later, I worked in commercial lending for Barnett Bank and Fortune 500 companies such as Gillette and Xerox. I earned my real estate license in 1972 and my insurance licenses in 1986. Shortly thereafter, my wife and I opened our Allstate Insurance Agency.

What inspires you to be involved in community service?
My mother was a trailblazer and is responsible for my life-long inspiration to community service and commitment to hard work and doing the right thing. She was a dedicated community advocate. Because of her, I’ve always felt the need to learn and then share what I’ve learned with other people.

Can you give some examples? I’ve tried to serve as a positive role model for our youth. I’ve served as a Scout leader, have helped youth attend summer camps, and provided scholarships to students demonstrating dedication and good grades. My philosophy is to stimulate thinking and let youth make better choices. In terms of community service, I’ve been Vice Chair of the American Diabetes Board, Vice President of the Sickle Cell Disease Association, a Founder of Youth Leadership Jacksonville, and a Member of the River Region Board, the Stoke Prevention Outreach Committee, and the Keepsafe Adult Day Care Program Board.

What do you find rewarding about serving as a Community Ambassador to the Mayo Clinic ADRC?
I think everyone should be involved and engage in conversations regarding

health issues. Alzheimer’s disease is an important health issue. We need to know that African Americans are twice as likely than others to suffer memory loss due to Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and that recognizing the signs and symptoms early leads to the best outcomes. We need to know that creating healthy lifestyle habits promotes better brain health and can delay memory loss. Being an Ambassador helps me learn and share this information with the community.

What are your thoughts on dementia research?
Everything we know now about Alzheimer’s disease and how to manage it is because someone joined a research study. If there is no research, there are no findings and therefore no cures. If there are no African Americans in research, no one will know if those findings and cures work the same for us as they do for others.

Meet an ADRC Team Member

John Lucas, PhD, ABPP

Dr. John Lucas is a Professor of Psychology at Mayo Clinic Florida. He is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist and has served as an investigator in the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center since he first joined Mayo Clinic in 1993.

A neuropsychologist is a health professional with specialized training in understanding the relationship between brain function and behavior. Using specialized tests of memory and other thinking abilities, they can help people understand how these abilities are affected by brain injury or disease. By understanding these changes, people can learn effective ways to improve, compensate for, or cope with their thinking or memory problems.

In research studies of aging and dementia, these tests can be used to determine if someone is a good fit for a particular project. Some studies, for example, require participants to have normal memory while other studies may be looking for people with specific degrees of memory loss or thinking difficulty.

One problem that Dr. Lucas and others in the ADRC began to notice early on was that commonly used tests of memory and thinking abilities were biased against African American test-takers, often resulting in them being unfairly excluded from study opportunities.

Together with Dr. Neill Graff-Radford and Dr. Floyd Willis, Dr. Lucas set out to better understand how African Americans perform on these tests, and to develop more accurate and fair standards for assessing memory and thinking abilities. Over 300 members of the Jacksonville African American community joined this effort, which became known as Mayo's Older African Americans Normative Studies. These standards were published in 2005 and continue to be used nationwide in both research and clinical settings to ensure accuracy in the evaluation of African American seniors with memory concerns.

In 2012, Dr. Lucas began working with Ms. Francine Parfitt on efforts to share information from Mayo’s ADRC with the local community. In 2016 they partnered with Mrs. Pamela Quarles to create an advisory board of community members, known as Ambassadors, who help develop, implement, and evaluate efforts to bring information, resources, and caregiver support to community members who need it. These efforts have included presentations, panel discussions, memory screenings, educational entertainment such as the stage productions of “Forget Me Not” and “Dot”, and “Dementia Friendly Community” programs in the New Town Success Zone and most recently in the Brentwood neighborhood.

Dr. Lucas is grateful for the support these efforts have received from the community and looks forward to continuing the mission of raising awareness and informing the community about brain health, Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. When not focused on work, he tells us that he very much enjoys traveling with his family, gardening, and cooking.

What's Cooking?

Courtesy of Mayo Clinic Staff

Unfortunately, fast food pizza is often made with processed ingredients like refined flour, sugar, and processed meats - things that should be avoided to promote better brain health.

This brain-healthy alternative has everything we love about a tasty, freshly made pizza, but with the added benefit of ingredients that provide lean protein, healthy fats, antioxidants, and essential vitamins and minerals needed to support healthy brain aging.

Barbecue Chicken Pizza

Serves 4

Ingredients

  • 1 cup tomato sauce (no salt added)
  • One 12-inch thin, whole-grain pizza crust
  • 1 green pepper, sliced into half-rings
  • 1 tomato, sliced
  • 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
  • 4 oz cooked chicken breast, sliced about 1-inch thick, fat removed
  • 4 oz cooked chicken breast, sliced about 1-inch thick, fat removed
  • 4 tablespoons barbecue sauce
  • 1 cup shredded, reduced-fat mozzarella cheese (about 4 oz)

Directions

  1. Heat the oven to 400 F.
  2. Spread the tomato sauce evenly over the pizza crust.
  3. Add the pepper, tomato, mushrooms and chicken.
  4. Drizzle barbecue sauce over the pizza and top with cheese.
  5. Bake about 12 to 14 minutes.
  6. Cut the pizza into 8 slices and serve.

Pro tips:

  • To make this pizza extra healthy, use homemade or low-sugar barbecue sauce.
  • Use a squeeze bottle to drizzle the barbecue sauce.
  • If you have a pizza stone, heat it in the oven before you put the pizza on it to bake.

Community Pages

Dementia Friendly Brentwood

On Saturday, February 22, members of the Mayo Clinic ADRC partnered with Brentwood Neighbors to embark on the next stage of creating a more “Dementia Friendly Community” (DFC) for Brentwood residents.

A DFC is a community that supports individuals living with dementia, their caregivers, and families by creating an environment where people with dementia can continue to engage in everyday activities, maintain their independence, and participate fully in neighborhood life.

In the first step of this journey, Mayo ADRC staff and Brentwood Neighbors met to identify shared goals. Brentwood Neighbors then invited neighborhood stakeholders to participate in focus groups to help us better understand community needs. Stakeholders met at North Pearl Street Missionary Baptist Church and included representatives from faith, medical, business, and civil service sectors of the community. Importantly, neighborhood residents, people living with memory loss, and their family members also joined the conversation.

The focus group discussions offered valuable perspectives on the informational, resource, and support priorities considered important for helping neighborhood families and organizations meet the needs of residents impacted by Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

In the next step, community members and Mayo Clinic Community Ambassadors will gather to review what was learned from the focus groups and will develop a plan to create and implement programs addressing the needs identified by the community as having highest priority.

MAREAS: Enhancing the Value of Research Participation

People join research studies for many reasons. Often, it’s personal because a loved one has/had the disease and the participant wants to honor them or act in ways that may help lower their own risk of getting the disease. For some, study participation can be inconvenient. It may be difficult, for example, to find the time to participate or find transportation to attend study visits. Mayo Clinic studies of aging, memory loss, and dementia often offer opportunities to reduce these burdens for study participants. Some studies, for example, may offer small stipends and/or arrange for transportation, if needed.

Many appreciate that study participation offers free brain health evaluations and the opportunity to meet with a dementia specialist to review their results at every annual visit; however, most agree that receiving a written brain health summary report of their research visit would 7further enhance the value of participation.

The Mayo Clinic MAREAS team is taking this feedback seriously and actively seeking to learn what information community members would find most helpful to receive. MAREAS stands for Mayo Advancing Research Equity in ADRD Study and is funded by the National Institute on Aging to understand the complex factors that contribute to Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) within the Hispanic, Latino, and Black/African American communities in Northeast Florida.

Dr. Christian Lachner is leading a MAREAS project to survey community members to find out what they would like to see included in a personalized brain health report. Dr. Lachner hopes to use this feedback to MAREAS: Enhancing the Value of Research Participation create brain health reports that will add value to community participation in Mayo Clinic research on aging and dementia. If you would like to complete a MAREAS survey, stop by the Mayo Clinic information table at one of the happenings listed on our Community Events page.

Calendar of Events

New Town's Dementia Friendly Community

Pictured above: S. Brown, M. Ellison, V. Mitchell, T. Logan, V. Mitchell. Not pictured: C.
Rivers, M. Hobdy, M. Heath

Did you know that a small but mighty group of dedicated volunteers in Jacksonville’s New Town neighborhood provide information and support programs for local residents with dementia and their care partners? Several years ago, the Mayo Clinic ADRC and the New Town Success Zone & Vision Keepers created a partnership to help New Town become a “Dementia Friendly Community” – a place where people with dementia can engage in neighborhood activities, maintain independence, and participate fully in community life.

Today, a neighborhood volunteer group sustains the education, information, and support programs created through that partnership. Ongoing efforts include monthly dementia education and support activities, participation in neighborhood food drives, and publication of a quarterly newsletter, Dementia Connection, containing articles and tips for caregivers of loved ones with memory loss and dementia, as well as neighborhood information.

Unfortunately, Dementia Connection could not be published this quarter, but we are happy to share the New Town Dementia Friendly Community Event Calendar for Spring 2025 in this issue of Let’s Talk Brain Health. All are invited to participate in these events.

April, May, and June Events

NEWTOWN SUCCESS ZONE COMMUNITY IMPACT DAYS

1401 Grunthal Street, Jacksonville, FL 32209

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

May 10, 2025 & June 14, 2025

SCHELL SWEET COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER FOOD DISTRIBUTION

1697 Kings Road, Jacksonville, FL 32209

9:00 AM - Noon or until food lasts

May 3, 2025 & June 7, 2025

MEMORY CAFE

Socialization and support for those with memory loss and caregivers

1401 Grunthal Street, Jacksonville, FL 32209

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

3rd Saturday of each month

May 17, 2025 & June 21, 2025

Contact:

Marcia Ellison (904) 866-3363 or Willetta Richardson (904) 470-8899 or Tina Logan (904) 651-5075

VISION KEEPERS

4th Thursday of the month

6:00 - 8:00 PM

Dinner always served

Call (904) 470-8899 for details

Spread the Word About Brain Health!

If you or someone you know would like to receive this newsletter, contact us through any of the methods described below to be added to our distribution list. If you have received this newsletter in error, or otherwise do not wish to receive future issues, please let us know. You can also reach out to us if you would like to:

  • learn more about obtaining a memory evaluation or diagnosis of dementia
  • speak with someone about caregiver resources
  • learn more about research opportunities

Simply point your Smartphone camera at the QR code below and touch the link that comes up on your screen. Select your choice of information and delivery options.

Other ways to reach us:

» Email: FLAMayoADRC@mayo.edu
» Phone: 904-953-6523
» Visit our website www.dementiaoutreach.mayo.edu
» Follow us on Facebook
» Subscribe to our YouTube Channel