2) #BlackHistoryMonth Dr. Lisa Barnes

Dr. Lisa Barnes PhD, is a cognitive neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and the Alla V. and Solomon Jesmer Professor of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at Rush Medical College.

For two decades Dr.Barnes has been running the Minority Aging Research Study, one of the nation’s largest studies of Alzheimer’s focused exclusively on Black people. She also created a brain bank which is used by other researchers to understand the illness.

Dr. Barnes has written nearly 300 research papers including a seminal work showing that the APOE4 gene variant that’s strongly linked to Alzheimer’s in White populations does not have the same effect in Black populations. In addition her work is focused on social factors that impact cognition, from school segregation to discrimination in housing, health care and more.