We proudly present and congratulate Erika Jonsson Laukka and Pär Schön for approved grants from Forte, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare. See below descriptions of the projects:

Erika Jonsson Laukka: Early detection of dementia: finding the best combination of cognitive and non-cognitive markers of preclinical dementia
The aim of this project is to deepen our knowledge regarding early markers of preclinical dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. To improve detection of persons at risk of dementia, we plan to use a multi-dimensional approach, combining cognitive and non-cognitive markers. For example, we will examine the usefulness of different cognitive measures in predicting future dementia and compare these to biological markers such as structural neuroimaging (whole-brain and specific regions, gray and white matter) and cerebrospinal fluid markers (Aβ, tau). Our research questions include: Which is the most potent preclinical marker of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease? How much can prediction accuracy be increased by combining several preclinical markers? Which is the optimal combination of preclinical markers to predict future dementia?
We will take advantage of an existing longitudinal population-based study on elderly persons – Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K). We will also use data collected at the Memory Clinic at Karolinska University Hospital.
Early detection is essential to improve success rate for different dementia interventions. Findings from this project may therefore have important implications for the quality of life for elderly people and their relatives, and for reducing societal costs for health care.
Pär Schön: Why do older people seek emergency care? Causes, circumstances and explanations
There have been considerable reductions in institutional care for older people in Sweden, driven by cost containment measures and by an ‘ageing in place’ policy. This means that an increasing proportion of frail older people are dependent on help in their own homes.
In recent years, a lot of attention has been paid to the growing number of older people seeking care at the hospital emergency departments (ED). However, very little is known about causes and reasons behind the roughly 1 million ED visits by older people annually in Sweden, but there are indications that a substantial number of these visits could have been avoided. Thus, it is not clear whether the use of ED care among older people is a consequence of increasing needs in the older population, or if the care needs could have been taken care of at other care levels, that is, whether the increasing number of older people seeking ED care is a symptom of deficiencies in other parts of the health and social care systems.
So, who are the older people seeking ED care? And why do they seek such care? The overall aim of this project is to study older people’s (80+) pathways to ED care. We will study causes, reasons and underlying mechanisms behind older people’s frequent ED visits.