A worldwide initiative, The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC), which is seeking to cure Alzheimer’s disease and improve brain health, has launched its Brain Health Navigator programme that will provide resources for patients and providers at six U.S. sites.
Despite Alzheimer’s status as a growing worldwide epidemic, pathways for accurate diagnosis and evidence based interventions including new therapies are either underdeveloped or non-existent.
Every day, over 2,000 patients in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease progress to later ones. The current system requires multiple stakeholders to coordinate in a rapid and efficient manner in order to ensure that candidates who are eligible for disease-modifying therapies receive them during the early window of opportunity when they will most benefit.
Even without new therapies, the diagnostic journey for patients and health systems is slow and cumbersome resulting in families not receiving all of the care options, including clinical trial participation, that should be available to them.
The Brain Health Navigator programme
To meet this challenge, DAC has developed the Brain Health Navigator programme to provide resources and intuitive coordination between patients and providers along the brain-health pathway.
The programme will support healthcare providers across multiple settings, from frontline patient interactions to diagnosis, and will include educational components on brain health and post-diagnostic care and support.
The six pilot sites will serve as start-up incubators for the development of materials and best practices for the program’s long-term sustainability and expansion, without the need for external funding.
Brain Health Navigators will be responsible for multiple clinical and public stakeholders, and their expertise connecting patients with resources at the local level will be valuable across health systems and geographies.
The learnings and practical resources from the Brain Health Navigator program will be incorporated into the DAC-SP Early Detection Blueprint.
“The DAC Healthcare System Preparedness team is proud to move forward with this important initiative building on the findings of our initial early detection programs. This effort aims to develop an intuitive set of resources that make care navigation scalable at a national level in the US,” said Tim MacLeod, DAC healthcare system preparedness director.
“Ultimately, our research has shown that navigation support plays a crucial role in making diagnosis more accessible to patients and families by providing resources that enable necessary changes to clinical workflows, making them more feasible and adoptable in real-world care settings.”
“Improving the patient pathway is not just a priority but an imperative,” said Tatsuyuki Yasuno, chairman and CEO, Eisai Inc.
“Ensuring timely diagnosis requires collaboration across healthcare systems and public-private partnerships like DAC. Collectively, we can transform the way we approach brain health by creating a more connected, patient-centric care journey.”
The sites where the programme is being launched include Dartmouth Health (New Hampshire), Memorial Healthcare (Owosso, Michigan), Norton Healthcare (Kentucky), Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group (California), UC Health (Ohio), and Keck Medical Center of USC, part of Keck Medicine of USC (California).
