We are officially five days away from the Walk!

These weeks are devoted to making sure the event runs smoothly.  Volunteers will be contacted with instructions for their assignments, we requested petty cash this afternoon, goody bag stuffing is arranged for later this week, and we gathered various items for the day of the event: banners, signs, shirts, hats, candy, face painting supplies, temporary tattoos, etc.  There is so much to do, and I am so thankful that Christina is in the office all the time to take care of things I can’t!

Christina and I are going to arrive at Rentschler Field at 7 AM on Sunday (that will be a fun day-after-Halloween!) and the rest of the staff will arrive at 8.  I still have to put together a contact list for exhibitors and others providing services or donating food at the event, so I have quite a busy day on Thursday as well.  The rest of the day on Thursday, we will pack up the supplies and make sure things are in order for Sunday.

I also just learned that we are probably going to miss out on around 100 registrants this year due to some large teams from last year that are not going to be present this weekend.  That’s a little disappointing, but we are all set on the financial side of things, so I’m sure it will be a great event nonetheless!

This past week was spent largely recruiting past teams of more than 10 people.  Looking up past participants was actually a little difficult, because the goal was to get in contact with the team captain (so we had to find that person in the midst of all the other information).

I also put in the order for the sponsor board and the goody bags, so it took some time to find high-resolution images to send to both print companies.  I learned that EPS files are high-resolution, and many other common file types are not (learned this the hard way!).

Lastly, I sent out the final details for exhibitors and volunteers.  Organizing the volunteers was bigger project than I thought because there continue to be cancellations, and others have not expressed a need for a certain assignment.  We also need to train our  volunteers, so I created a schedule for their arrival on the day of the event that I’ll be able to work from.  I’m planning to add phone numbers for vendors and people crucial to the event.

This past week at BIAC was a whirlwind!  And it was mostly due to needing to order shirts.

This year’s shirts will be “daisy,” “gold,” and purple (for volunteers).  Of course, it took Julie and I quite some time to decide on colors, and then I had to design a structure for the sponsors’ logos that were to go on the backs of the shirts.  I got some ad lib design experience, so that was a bonus 🙂

Then, we had many people register right before the October 9th shirt deadline.  So, recalculating the number of shirts we could guarantee was also a hassle.  The good thing is we’re over 120 online registrants.  Hopefully that’s due to some of my Facebook promotion posts (as well as forcing the BIAC board members to register haha).

Last week, Julie, Christina and I also visited Rentschler Field for a preliminary walk-through.  I met Ben Richards, the new contact person for our event.  We got along well; more and more I am realizing that it’s about who you know and forming solid business relationships with people.

This week, I’ll focus on putting together a volunteer check-in table, a list of things to bring to Rentschler on the day of the Walk, and other miscellaneous preparations for right before the event.

This blog post will be relatively short because I have finished up my September tasks (right on time!) and will move on to October tasks this week.

This week, I met Christina, BIAC’s new Development Director.  As I mentioned in the recent lab meeting, she and I are going to work really well as a team.  She also has all of the knowledge and experience that I don’t have with things like corporate sponsorships.  I’m hoping that she’ll give me a few pointers on how to ask for money from places like Shoprite.

I now have a full list of volunteers!  The only people I have not been able to reach at all this year are the fraternity at the University of Hartford.  I’m sure I can reach out to a greek life house at Trinity that would love to help out to fulfill community service hours, though.

On that note, I’m sure I will have more questions or concerns next week after starting my October timeline!

First off, an announcement: I found a food truck!  Julie was a little nervous, but it all worked out.

The thing I am seeing less success with is sponsorships.  I’m not sure if it has something to do with seeing my name instead of Christine’s, or if I am simply going about it in the wrong way (though I do copy Julie’s format each time I send out an email soliciting a sponsorship from a specific company).  It also could be that it’s simply a tougher task.  On the bright side, the new development director starts on October 1st, so communicating with potential sponsors with won’t be part of my job for much longer.

It feels as though I am making significant progress.  I don’t have the prior experience to judge where I am in the planning process as compared to where I should be, but it seems like things are moving along well.

It’s also easy to lose myself in the tasks and forget why I do this work.  At CASO today, someone new came in.   She has been concussed for almost five years.  As she was telling me about her struggles (and signing up for Team Trinity), I was reminded of the people I’m working for.  As I heal, it’s easy to lose touch with how difficult it used to be to even have a conversation with someone.  My meeting with this person helped put me back in touch with the struggles of a survivor.  I hope this humble reminder stays with me for awhile.

Written by Elizabeth S. Gromisch, M.A.

When someone has been diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition or has sustained injury to the brain, such as with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), there is often a concern about changes in cognition. In a degenerative condition such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a decline in cognitive functioning can be indicative of disease progression. Identifying disease progression is important not only in clinical settings, but research settings in which new treatments are developed.

In AD drug trials, MRIs of brain atrophy may be used as an outcome, as changes in the volumes of the right and left hippocampi would be associated with changes in memory. Previously, screening measures of cognitive and behavioral status, such as the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) and AD Assessment Scale (ADAS) have been used (Cummings, Gould, & Zhong, 2012), but along with other brief measures like the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), they may not be the most reliable (but that is a topic for another blog post!).

Schmand et al.’s (2014) study compared MRIs as an outcome to a neuropsychological battery. If you are not familiar with a neuropsychological battery, it consists of several measures that assess different cognitive domains, such as memory, language, and executive functioning. These measures can be pencil and paper tests, though they can be administered through a computer. In addition to providing a more comprehensive picture of an individual’s cognitive functioning, neuropsychological tests can have stronger psychometric properties than screening measures (Schmand et al., 2014).

Participants in the study (N = 62) were patients at the Academic Medical Centre memory clinic in Amsterdam. They were between the ages of 50 to 85 and had cognitive complaints. At baseline, they underwent a neurological examination and were administered the CDR and MMSE. Participants then underwent a structural MRI scan and neuropsychological evaluation, which included measures of executive functioning, memory, verbal fluency, and effort. Two years later, they had a follow-up MRI and neuropsychological evaluation, with alternative forms of the tests used. With the MRI, they focused on the cortical thickness of the temporal lobe and atrophy of the hippocampus. They found when they used the neurologist’s diagnosis, the neuropsychological assessment was more responsive with patients with MCI and early dementia compared to the MRI. Another benefit found with using this brief neuropsychological battery, which takes about 45 minutes, is intervention trials in AD and mild cognitive impairment which can have a 50% smaller sample size.

Repeat neuropsychological assessment is often used in a clinical setting. For example, an individual who has sustained a TBI may have an assessment early on in the recovery period, and may undergo repeat testing a year later to track changes in cognitive status. However, there are concerns clinicians should keep in mind with repeat testing. A significant issue that may arise is the practice effect, in which an individual’s performance on the follow-up may be better due to previous exposure to the measure. This can occur even when the questions on the test are different or an alternative version of the test is used (Heilbronner et al., 2010). In the official position from the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology (AACN), they recommend “change as a measurable construction to be used to inform the clinical descriptive and diagnostic process…consideration may be given to the standard error of measurement for a test manual, empirical findings on the expected magnitudes of score increases over a particular interval, or other relevant research on test operating characteristics for the instruments employed in the neuropsychologist’s battery.”

References

1. Cummings, J., Gould, H., & Zhong, K. (2012). Advances in designs for Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials. American Journal of Neurodegenerative Diseases, 1, 205-216
2. Heilbronner, R.L., Sweet, J.J., Attix, D.K., Krull, K.R., Henry, G.K., & Hart, R.P. (2010). Official position of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology on serial neuropsychological assessment: the utility and challenges of repeat test administrations in clinical and forensic contexts. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 24, 1267-1278
3. IOS Press. (2014 February). Neuropsychological assessment more efficient than MRI for tracking disease progression in memory clinic patients. Accessed from http://www.iospress.nl/ios_news/neuropsychological-assessment-more-efficient-than-mri-for-tracking-disease-progression-in-memory-clinic-patients/
4. Schmand, B., Rienstra, A., Tamminga, H., Richard, E., van Gool, W.A., Cann, M.W.A., & Majoie, C.B. (2014). Responsiveness of magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological assessment in memory clinic patients. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 40, 409-418