The UNM Health Sciences Center has established a new medical center to deal with the increasing number of cases of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia in New Mexico.
The center was established Jan.1, UNM officials said.
The UNM Health Sciences Center’s Memory and Aging Center (UMAC) will be operational in the coming two to three months, UNMHSC officials said.
Gary Rosenberg, chair of the UNM Department of Neurology, said that UMAC will not only deal with Alzheimer’s but all kinds of cognitive diseases.
Janice Knoefel, professor of Geriatrics and Neurology, said that a lot of people in New Mexico are getting old, and with the age increase comes a higher risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
“We are seeing a large increase in the number of cases of these diseases. The majority of these cases are emerging among the baby boomer generation,” she said.
Currently, it is estimated that there are 36,000 people in New Mexico with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, Knoefel said.
She said that, according to the estimates, the number of people with different forms of dementia will jump up to 53,000 in New Mexico.
“It is a fairly significant problem in our state. Other states in the union are also experiencing the same problem. More than 100,000 New Mexicans take care of an adult with dementia,” she said. “This is obviously going to be increasing in the coming years.”
Currently UNM provides dementia care clinical services through three separate departments: Neurology, Internal Medicine and Psychiatry, according to a UNMHSC press release.
UNM Health Sciences Center administration wanted to expand and consolidate dementia care and research activities in the University, so they decided to establish a new center at the School of Medicine, Knoefel said.
“The core mission for the HSC and UNMH is clinical care. And in order to consolidate our services, to fully integrate them and to make them comprehensive, we would like to make it one-stop shopping. We are trying to make the system easy and accessible for patients and their relatives,” she said. “We are dramatically expanding our clinical ability to provide services to the citizens of New Mexico who are having cognitive decline.”
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Knoefel said that the whole purpose of the clinical services is to provide a diagnosis that includes evaluation and examination and to provide treatment and management of symptoms that might be present after the initial treatment.
Besides clinical care, UMAC will also do research on dementia and provide education on the disease, Knoefel said.
“Dr. Rosenberg and other researchers already have successful research programs in the field. The research includes basic sciences, animal sciences and clinical studies. We are making great advances in understanding dementia,” she said.
She said the UMAC researchers are at a point where they are starting to test some actual therapies for various types of dementia.
The center will also provide education to medical students, nurses and practitioners on the disease.
“We already have a pretty robust education program for medical students, nursing, therapy and pharmacy. We train students in these areas. We will also enhance our ability to train our interns, residents and fellows as well. Life does not end once you graduate from medical or nursing school; then you go to practice. One of our aims is to train practitioners. We want to update them on new medical knowledge and new therapy,” she said.
Rosenberg said that he and his team members are currently hiring staff for the center.
“Getting it started is the hardest part,” he said.
The center will be funded by different sources, including medical school, grant money and the clinical revenue, Rosenberg said.
According to a UNMHSC statement, the creation of the center came at the request of Paul Roth, UNM chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of the UNM School of Medicine, and Executive Vice Chancellor Richard Larson.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
