photo of a twisted stethoscope

“Understanding Dementia and Its Co-occurrences with Other Leading Causes of Death”

Despite the high prevalence of multi-morbidity among older adults with cognitive impairment, little is known about how the specific combinations of conditions that constitute multi-morbidity relate to the leading causes of death by level of cognitive impairment.

Siran KoroukianSiran Koroukian, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, will explore this topic in the next Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods seminar.

She will give a talk titled “Understanding Dementia and Its Co-occurrences with Other Leading Causes of Death” Wednesday, Dec. 14, from noon to 1:15 p.m. in the ground floor conference room of the BioEnterprise Building.

Koroukian and her team analyzed leading causes of death across levels of cognitive impairment and in relation to specific combinations of multi-morbidity conditions. With the exception of respondents with moderate to severe cognitive impairment, their results showed that the leading causes of death are similar between those with no cognitive impairment or mild cognitive impairment, highlighting the importance of chronic disease management in individuals with mild cognitive impairment.

Koroukian is a health services researcher with interest in outcomes and disparities research using population-health databases, including Medicare, Medicaid, cancer registry data and the Health and Retirement Study.

Her studies focus on cancer and aging and cancer-related disparities in vulnerable populations, including Medicaid beneficiaries with mental illness. More recently, and with grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, her research efforts have focused on multi-morbidity in older adults, including among those with cognitive impairment.