CLARiTI Completes First Year at Northwestern Mesulam Institute
By: Ananya Chandhok
Equitable representation in research is not just a goal post.
For Dani Chitwood, senior community engagement coordinator, it is her life story.
A year to date, her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.
While seeking healthcare and support, Chitwood quickly realized that having brain health concerns is a privilege.
“You have to be rich to be sick,” Chitwood said. “My mom is someone who has a lot of resources, but even with a lack of socioeconomic barriers, there’s historical challenges that presented themselves.”
Chitwood’s personal struggle with overcoming brain health barriers is evidence that historical underrepresentation is not theoretical.
It is real.
A struggle that started personally became Chitwood’s motivation to stop bringing historically underrepresented communities to research and start bringing research to the communities instead.
The answer: aligning community-based recruitment with research outcomes.
The Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Consortium for Clarity in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Research Through Imaging (CLARiTI) — a nationwide effort, to better understand Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias — completed its first year at the Northwestern Mesulam Institute for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease, contributing to doubling the nationwide target for recruitment through historically underrepresented groups (URGs).
Understanding dementia is like shaping a complex painting — each new imaging data point adds a brushstroke, sharpening the picture to improve diagnosis and treatment.
More images help researchers piece together how the brain structurally and functionally changes as dementia progresses.
With more imaging snapshots, researchers begin to understand more about how brain tissue breaks down, how neural connectivity changes, and the differences between types of dementias.
Neural artists, or rather researchers, are collecting and piecing brain imaging data through CLARiTI.
As of Aug. 2025, the study recruited 152 individuals across all participating Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers (ADRCs), adding to the data collected in three major categories: amyloid protein buildup, tau protein buildup, and neuroimaging scans.
By focusing on these data points, researchers hope to better understand biological changes, improve dementia subtype categorization, and improve diagnostic accuracy.
Todd Parrish, co-principal investigator in CLARiTI and director of the Mesulam Institute Imaging Core, said the study’s access to exclusive technology may contribute to more efficient dementia detection.
“Finding biomarkers that can be detected early in a noninvasive way [through these unique radiotracers] is going to be key for identifying the disease and identifying people for different types of treatment,” Parrish said.
But the focus is not just collecting as much data as possible — it is also collecting data from a diverse research cohort, according to Parrish and Darby Morhardt, PhD, LSCW, co-principal investigator in CLARiTI.
“Under-represented populations are essential in dementia studies to ensure findings are equitable, generalizable, and lead to accurate diagnostics and effective treatments for all communities,” according to CLARiTI’s nationwide seminar recapping year one results.
The wider, more diverse participant pool CLARiTI can recruit, the clearer the image on dementias’ prognosis gets.
The nationwide ADRC goal is to have 25% from a target total of 2,000 participants enrolled recruited from underrepresented groups (URGs) by the time the study completes.
“It’s [recruiting from URGs[Our URG recruitment criteria is] not just racial or ethnicity based,” said Jessica Moonjely, CLARiTI research study coordinator, “It’s also based on years of education, if they’re coming from a rural area, and family history [for example asking about any first-degree relatives — including biological parents, siblings, or children, that have dementia].”
All ADRC’s collectively have exceeded the nationwide minimum enrollment goal for underrepresented groups by crossing their original target of 25% of total enrollments coming from URGs to 52%, within its first year of active recruitment.
Exceeding the target by 27% was not a happy accident.
In fact, accounting for historical marginalization in dementia-related research required taking a critical approach to recruitment.
“Historically, people from underrepresented groups, mainly Black folks, have been mistreated in various studies,” Chitwood said. “Where there’s mistreatment, there’s mistrust.”
This involved dedicated task forces creating intentional brain health programming for marginalized communities, so the focus shifted from how researchers can gain data from them to how communities can begin to trust researchers’ intentions.
Allowing communities to lead the conversation and questions about brain health, Chitwood fielded substantial interest in research through hosting brain health seminars.
“It’s important to be willing to listen and offer sources of trust and guarantee that [historically excluded] individuals will be safe from physical harm and psychological harm.”
Some communities she has helped CLARiTI establish their roots in include Bronzeville and Chicago’s West and South Sides.
Lessons Learned in The First Year
CLARiTI gets interested individuals into the door, but it also leads them into a research pipeline.
If qualification criteria are not met, the intent is to guide individuals to potentially pre-screen for other active studies within the Institute.
Chitwood believes solidifying this pipeline comes from implementing community feedback.
“Listening first is key,” she said. “Instead of talking about what we can offer, being a willing listening ear is imperative.”
Her community involvement also taught her that following up with interested individuals is a shared responsibility between community engagement leads and the research teams.
One way the team is factoring this in is by implementing Listening Sessions, or open forums for interested community members to ask questions about brain health.
Chitwood believes these sessions followed by periodical check-ins with interested individuals will help their team continue to capitalize on the high demand for research interest.
CLARiTI Pilots ‘Return of Results’ for Curious Participants
The CLARiTI team is now partnering with Sandra Weintraub, clinical neuropsychologist and professor of psychiatry and neurology, to allow participants to access their MRI and amyloid buildup data.
The “Return of Results” process makes CLARiTI unlike most active cognitive imaging studies globally, allowing individuals with unique insights into their imaging data over the course of their study participation.
“It [study participation] does help society in general,” Parrish said. “But if people are really curious about their own stats, this is a way to get that information.”
This process will be piloted at the Institute through a select group of active participants before being rolled out as an option to the entire cohort.
Who Qualifies for Study Enrollment?
Individuals 50 or older and not enrolled in any other imaging studies are the target candidates for trial recruitment.
Visit the CLARiTI site for more information on the nationwide study and to see if you qualify. For more information on the study at the Mesulam Institute, contact Jessica Moonjely or Joshua Pasaye, CLARiTI research coordinators.
As CLARiTI begins its second year, the team hopes to continue building trust and supporting the URGs just as they have supported dementia research.
“This work is personal,” Chitwood said. “If we can help by sharing information about brain health and offering support for families, that’s exactly what we want to do.”