As of 2024, the cost for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) care is estimated to be $360 billion with potential to rise to $1 trillion by 2050 (Alzheimer’s Association, 2024). While literature shows that access to ADRD care is difficult, few have explored the factor of income on how caregivers learn and attain knowledge for ADRD care management. One study posited being low income can induce having difficulty accessing professional assistance (Reeves et al., 2016), but this association has yet to be further explored in ADRD care. To further explore the difficulties in accessing ADRD care support, this study examined ADRD caregivers of varying income levels and their experiences with acquiring professional assistance. Caregivers answered a questionnaire regarding their demographics, eHealth literacy, and more. Caregivers also completed an immediate test, and two days later a delayed test, both about ADRD care management after being provided with texts containing information about ADRD management. The majority of caregivers reported experiencing some degree of difficulty with tasks such as obtaining a healthcare provider or securing health insurance for their loved one with ADRD. The findings suggest that there is a need for more accessible resources for caregivers. One way to meet this need is through credible online interventions catered to caregivers that aid them in locating affordable resources and access to ADRD information as it pertains to their caregiver role. This study and its recommendations aim to help tailor future interventions for a more efficient delivery of support to caregivers.

College students face many challenges when it comes to discovering their identity, establishing independence, developing a routine, adjusting to a new lifestyle, handling stress and social interactions. Furthermore, students that have been exposed to chronic Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can experience negative impacts on their mental health and academic performance. ACEs are childhood experiences of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and/or household dysfunctions such as substance abuse, mental illness, suicide, or incarceration (Felitti et al., 2019). Felitti et al. (1998) found that ACEs are linked to many different health risk factors such as declining health, smoking, alcohol abuse, depression, and substance abuse. College students that have been exposed to ACEs are more likely to struggle with their mental health, depression, and anxiety (Hatton-Bowers et al., 2023). The purpose of this research is to examine how ACEs impact a college students’ performance. I would like to learn how students define academic success and if they believe they fit that definition. I would like to discover how ACEs influence students’ overall ability to learn and retain information, focus on academic work, develop study habits, and have successful social interactions with peers. I theorize that students who have been exposed to four or more ACEs will struggle more with the demands and pace of college life than students who have 3 or fewer ACEs. This research is essential for universities to be able identify students with ACEs to better understand and support these students.

Learning and remembering medications requires memory associations that older adults (65+ years old) experience difficulty forming (e.g., Naveh-Benjamin, 2000). One-way older adults can compensate for such memory deficits is to prioritize important medication interactions more than others (e.g., Castel, McGillivray, & Friedman, 2012; McGillivray & Castel, 2017). The current study will ask older and younger adults to study medications and drug interactions to determine how much task experience is necessary for younger and older adults to optimize learning for drug interactions, and how well they can freely recall this critical health information. Participants were asked to recall fictitious drug interactions- categorized into mild, moderate, and severe interactions- and their following aversive health effect in three blocks. Participants also completed a measure of health literacy, 2 self-efficacy surveys, and a cognitive battery. The results revealed that recall increases with task experience in both older and younger adults based on the severity of drug interaction, which supports a value directed remembering approach to encoding. Younger adults remembered more in comparison to older adults, which indicates general insights to the cognitive differences between older and younger adults in their abilities to recall drug interactions. Future research should examine ways to increase recall in the other categories of drug interactions (mild and moderate) by using cues such as bolded words and colored fronts.