Sanders-Brown Center on Aging
Commonwealth Center of Excellence in Stroke

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Sanders-Brown Center on Aging

The Stroke Program of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging is a multi-disciplinary research group established to improve care and treatment of patients suffering from stroke in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

In 1989, the Kentucky Council on Higher Education designated the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging a Commonwealth Center of Excellence. As a part of this designation, the Center on Aging received funding to establish a program devoted to stroke prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and research.

The Stroke Program was created to increase survival and improve the quality of life for stroke patients in Kentucky. The following set of principal goals were established for the Stroke Program upon its founding:

• To develop a strong, multidisciplinary research program addressing the clinical, biomedical, and behavioral problems associated with stroke.
• To develop an integrated, multidisciplinary teaching program on stroke to provide instruction and practical educational experience for medical, nursing, social work and physical therapy students.
• To provide trained professionals to diagnose and treat stroke and work with the community to help prevent stroke.

To implement these goals, funds were allocated to the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging to recruit faculty in neurology, biochemistry, behavioral science, rehabilitation medicine, epidemiology, and magnetic resonance imaging. A core staff was also hired to provide support for the faculty.

Current research includes clinical trials of experimental stroke therapy, preclinical studies of factors affecting blood flow to the brain, research on the relationship of stroke to Alzheimer's disease and cognitive change, and studies of the effects of right and left hemisphere stroke on language, communication, and marital interaction.

In Fall 2004, Odyssey magazine featured an article on the scope of stroke research at the University of Kentucky. You can read that article at this link.