Network on Early-Life Determinants, Biosocial Pathways, and Dementia (EdDem) - PROJECT SUMMARY The prevalence and burden of dementia are accelerating rapidly. While biomedical advances are critical to developing treatments, addressing social and behavioral risk factors remains essential for prevention. Most prevention research, however, focuses on midlife, despite evidence that the origins of dementia risk may be rooted in early life, with research on education a notable exception. Our current Network on Education, Biosocial Pathways, and Dementia (R24AG077433, EdDem) brought together a highly productive and engaged group of social and biomedical scientists to advance research on the relationship between education and dementia and the life-course pathways underlying this association. The proposed Network on Early-Life Determinants, Biosocial Pathways, and Dementia (EdDem) will build on this success by broadening the scientific scope beyond education to encompass a wider range of early-life exposures that shape dementia risk, while expanding its infrastructure to engage new investigators and disciplines through innovative initiatives and shared resources that accelerate discovery. New partnerships with NIA-supported aging centers will extend EdDem’s reach and strengthen long-term sustainability. The proposed R33 will (1) advance understanding of how early-life conditions shape dementia through social, behavioral, and biological pathways by fostering multidisciplinary collaborations that generate new lines of inquiry; (2) strengthen rigor, reproducibility, and transparency in accessing and using NIH-supported longitudinal population datasets that include early-life measures, biomarkers, and cognitive assessments by establishing a Data Resource & Sharing Hub that provides consultation on study design and data management, reviews analytic code to ensure accuracy and reproducibility, and maintains a curated online catalogue of analytic resources; (3) expand research capacity through cross-disciplinary training, research support, and networking; and (4) develop and test the Brain Development-to-Dementia (BD2D) Tool, an AI- assisted analytic platform that draws from biomedical, developmental, and social-behavioral research to identify common constructs and evidence gaps—helping researchers integrate and visualize evidence on early-life pathways to dementia and generate new hypotheses about how early-life and midlife processes contribute to dementia risk. Together, these activities will establish EdDem as a sustainable infrastructure that integrates data, methods, and expertise across disciplines to promote innovative, rigorous, and reproducible dementia research. By connecting social, behavioral, and biomedical scientists, EdDem will strengthen the field’s capacity to determine when and how early-life conditions shape dementia risk and generate the knowledge and resources needed to guide prevention strategies that reduce the future burden of dementia.
