Ideas Institute

Grant (total grant $131,206) from the Alzheimer's Association to further develop the Environment Audit Scoring Evaluation (EASE) to assess the person centered environmental characteristics of long-term care residential care settings. IDEAS Institute has been working on the EASE for several years (see 4b below) and expects this work will continue for at least 5 more years. The ultimate goal is to have the EASE be both valid and reliable for use in research projects about the design of long-term care settings, and for use as a design tool when renovating and designed new care settings. The EASE will ultimately be made available for free, along with an extensive training manual and other training resources. Aspects of this project (both 4a and 4b) have been published in Innovation in Aging journal and at several national conferences in 2022 and 2023.

Research funded by National Institute on Aging, conducted in partnership with Grand Valley State University. The purpose of the project was to evaluate several interventions on the ability of individuals with mild cognitive impairment and early to moderate stage dementia, who live in shared residential settings to effectively wayfind their way around their residence. By June 2023, 127 residents had been enrolled in the study. Preliminary results were presented at the Environments for Aging conference. Several publications and additional presentation are planned for the future. IDEAS Institute was a sub-awardee. The amounts listed relate to the time period for this return. The total grant award was $2,500,000. IDEAS total subaward was $131,000. The amounts reflect activity for the period of this return.

IDEAS Institute partnered with Kansas State University on a grant from the National Institute on Aging, also for validation and reliability of the EASE tool (described in 4a). The grant was made to Kansas State University, and IDEAS Institute had a sub-award. The total grant award was $246,388 over a period of 3 years. IDEAS Institute's total subaward was $94,355 over the 3 year period.

Other smaller research and educational activities.