Moody College of Communication is proud to announce the establishment of The Center for Communication in Aging and Dementia (CCAD), housed within the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. CCAD will combine two existing research labs, the Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab, directed by Maya Henry, and the Multilingual Aphasia and Dementia Research Lab, led by Stephanie Grasso. Henry and Grasso will serve as co-directors of CCAD.
“People don’t necessarily think about dementia research when they think of a college of communication,” Henry said. “So, part of this is about bringing visibility to the work, but also to the problem. There is a critical gap in understanding and care delivery for patients and families. With dementia, people primarily think about memory loss instead of communication disorders, but there are communication challenges present in virtually every type of dementia.”
Both Henry and Grasso’s labs have a long and continuous history of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and private foundations. Through the formal designation of CCAD, there will be increased opportunities for research funding, more positions for students and trainees with unique clinical and research experiences and, ultimately, more readily available help for those navigating life changes and dementia diagnoses.
"We also want to better understand the elements of basic science that underlie these conditions,” Grasso said. “We know there may be early markers of disease that can help us potentially find an earlier diagnosis of dementia. Communication is a powerful tool that we can use in several different ways but has, so far, been underrepresented and less focused on in the scientific community.”
