Autumn 2024 Academic Year Part-Time Research Fellowship Opportunity: "Preventing dementia in India: Digital tools to deliver region-specific lifestyle interventions"
The Stanford King Center on Global Development’s Academic Year Part-Time Research Fellowship Program connects King Center faculty affiliates and affiliated researchers with undergraduate students committed to providing research support 8-10 hours per week during autumn, winter, and spring quarters.
Students have the opportunity to engage in world-class research that has real-world impact. Undergraduate student research fellows are paid $19/hour, for 8-10 hours per week of research per quarter.
*Students must submit an I-9 form to verify employment and receive payment.
Students must be enrolled full-time to participate and must be able to commit to research 8-10 hours per week. Students who cannot accept pay may be allowed to receive academic credit for this research.
Research Project Description:
Of the more than 55 million people living with dementia globally, 60% live in low- and middle-income countries, with growing prevalence in South Asia. The associated socioeconomic burden and dearth of curative treatments underscores the importance of effective strategies to prevent dementia to improve the quality of life of aging populations. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) from the worldwide (WW) FINGER study have shown that lifestyle interventions encompassing diet, exercise, cognitive training, vascular risk monitoring and social stimulation can reduce cognitive decline in Finland and several other countries, but have not yet been tested in India—a large, diverse country where dementia remains stigmatized despite growing prevalence, especially disadvantaging older women. This multidisciplinary collaborative research project, led by Stanford University with external partners ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition of India and the WW-FINGER network, will create digital tools to disseminate the lifestyle intervention in India and conduct a pilot RCT based on ongoing collaboration with a geriatric study of over 600 participants in urban and rural settings in and around the city of Hyderabad.
The undergraduate research fellow will support the team in three specific aims during academic year 2024-25:
1. Build digital tools to disseminate resources about lifestyle interventions to prevent dementia in India. We will complete ongoing development of a website providing resources about dementia and its prevention, tailored to the demographic, cultural, and socioeconomic context of India, as well as an app to deliver region-specific and personalized lifestyle advice for older adults in Hyderabad, state of Telangana.
2: Conduct pilot RCT to evaluate the efficacy of this app for raising awareness and improving lifestyle behaviors to prevent dementia. At least 100 participants from the Hyderabad geriatric study aged 55-90 with cognitive scores in the highest quintile (already calculated in preliminary data) will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio into the app-guided multidomain lifestyle intervention group and those receiving routine health advice. Serum biomarkers, cognitive assessment scores, and neuroimaging will be compared at baseline, 6 months, and 18 months after lifestyle interventions.
3: Analyze pilot RCT data for efficacy and cost effectiveness: To quantify the potential socioeconomic benefits of lifestyle interventions to prevent dementia, we will also systematically collect and analyze data on the health care use and spending of study participants using validated survey questions from the Longitudinal Study on Aging in India (LASI), including health behaviors, outpatient utilization, avoidable hospitalizations and quality of life, stratified by strength of engagement with the app during the study period and baseline cognitive score.
Research Mentor: Karen Eggleston, DoR - Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI)
Stanford undergraduate students in good academic standing and enrolled full-time are eligible to apply. Co-term students must have undergraduate student status - if they are in GR billing status (after 12 quarters) they will be ineligible.
All majors are welcome!
The research fellow will assist with multiple aspects of the project, including input regarding design of the digital app and resource websites; data visualization and analysis; literature review and comparative study of such interventions as part of healthy aging innovation in low- and middle-income settings. An excellent research fellow who contributes substantively to the design, analysis, or interpretation will also have opportunity to coauthor one of the resulting papers.
Students qualifications:
- Some background in microeconomics, human biology, or health policy,
- Basic data analytic skills or strong motivation to learn; econometrics background preferred.
- Understanding of South Asian context, and interest or experience with digital health/AI/ML for lifestyle interventions, would be helpful.
Time Commitment:
The time commitment is 8-10 hours per week (equivalent to a 3-unit course) during autumn quarter. Continuation in winter and spring quarters is possible with the agreement of both the research mentor and the student.
These hours may be an average and be flexible across the 10-week quarter to accommodate your academic obligations, such as midterms or finals week.
To Apply:
Along with the application, applicants are asked to submit:
- a cover letter
- resume or CV
- unofficial Stanford transcript (first quarter frosh do not need to submit transcripts for autumn quarter applications)
