Project Summary/Abstract
Over the past 15 years, substantial scientific advances have been made in understanding the links between the
exposome and AD/ADRD risk factors. Yet Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains a world region for which there is
limited data and understanding around AD/ADRD prevalence and context-specific risk factors. The parent study
(R01-AG077001) seeks to address this gap in research by establishing the Kenya Life Panel Survey (KLPS) as
the premier SSA cohort for AD/ADRD life course risk factor research. The KLPS is a unique, richly phenotyped
cohort of Kenyan adults who have been followed since childhood, and who were participants in a randomized
child health intervention (school-based deworming). The existing dataset contains information on health,
cognition, educational, demographic, social attitudes, and labor market outcomes for over 6,500 Kenyans first
surveyed in 1998 (at ages 8-15) through 2021 (ages 31-39). KLPS thus provides an unusual opportunity to study
cognition, and the determinants of AD/ADRD and related risk factors, over the life course, with direct
measurement during childhood, young adulthood, and midlife. The KLPS Round 5 Aging Module (KLPS-5A)
funded by the NIA parent grant collects detailed “midlife baseline” cognition measures aligned with the
Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) Network of studies, and aging-related health data, as well
as information on AD/ADRD risk factors and exposure measures, among participants, who will be 35 to 43 years
old at the time of survey. One novel aspect is the ability to link these midlife measures to existing data from
childhood and early adulthood that was collected contemporaneously rather than via recall in later life. Another
innovation is the ability to experimentally estimate the long-term effect of a child health intervention on AD/ADRD
risk factors in midlife.
The proposed administrative supplement is within scope of the parent grant, and will (a) enhance KLPS-5A with
a significantly expanded and more comprehensive set of exposome measures of midlife (i) occupational
complexity, job characteristics and work-related stress, (ii) social interactions and support, and (iii) air pollution
exposure measures, all on the same sample of respondents, and will also (b) create public datasets, project
materials, and data products on these exposome measures for use by others. The proposed measures capture
salient and modifiable risk factors associated with AD/ADRD, which to date remain under-studied in this and
other low- and middle-income contexts in SSA and elsewhere. In addition, these proposed measures capture
risk factors that may have been influenced by the long-term effects of the child health intervention. The R01
parent study has planned to collect a partial set of these exposome measures; the administrative supplement
will support an additional field survey interview dedicated to substantially expanding data collection along these
dimensions, and will also allow us to link individual data to air pollution exposure measures (from existing sources
and project sensors). These data will be of interest to the broader research community and public.
