ACAR Brain Health Intervention Study

The main objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness of four Total Brain Health educational programs, TBH Brain Workout (1.0 and 2.0) and TBH Memory (1.0 and 2.0), in older adults residing in independent living facilities through the Acts Center for Applied Research (ACAR). Each TBH program trains for lifestyle intervention skills across the wellness spectrum shown by research to promote cognitive performance and reduce dementia risk, using social-based training methods, and experiential learning activities. Each TBH program also has two levels of difficulty (1.0 and 2.0), which will be assessed in independent groups. Each independent living community will administer one TBH program at a time such that participants will be randomly assigned to one of three categories: 1) one of the four educational programs, 2) an active book club that will read and discuss on tips to improve one's brain health, and 3) a wait-list control group. All groups other than the wait-list control group will have 8 sessions across 2 months. The older adults who agree to be a part of the research will be asked to fill out a survey at pre-intervention, post-intervention 1 (immediate), and post-intervention 2 (2 months). We predict that the participants in the TBH Brain Workout and TBH Memory programs (all difficulty levels) will have a greater knowledge about brain health, improved subjective appraisals of their memory, improved social outcomes, lower depression, and reduced dementia risk compared with the two control groups. The investigators predict that the active book club control will differ on brain health knowledge than the wait-list control group. Due to the more cognitively challenging nature of the harder TBH programs, the investigators also predicted that the harder versions would have greater improvement in brain health knowledge and improved subjective appraisals of their memory than the easier versions.