Get Involved

Earlier this month, voters took a huge step toward improving the lives of more than 460,000 Texans living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias with the passage of Proposition 14, which created a constitutional amendment to fund the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (DPRIT).

By establishing a centralized data core lab at UTHealth Houston, the project aims to accelerate discovery, improve clinical translation, and foster nationwide collaboration. It will enable investigators to identify early markers, test interventions, and better understand the complex mechanisms driving Alzheimer’s.

“As the contact PI for the $27 million national Alzheimer’s data harmonization initiative ReCARDO, I am extremely excited for the passage of Proposition 14 to establish DPRIT. There are fundamental synergistic interplays between DPRIT and the ReCARDO national Alzheimer’s data harmonization initiative,” said GQ Zhang, PhD, vice president and chief data scientist at UTHealth Houston and a professor and Distinguished Chair in Digital Innovation at McGovern Medical School. “The data science and AI resources generated from ReCARDO will be immediately made available for DPRIT-funded projects. In return, DPRIT-generated data can be included in the ReCARDO data ecosystem, further enriching its scope and depth for dementia research.”

Principal investigators of the grant are Zhang; Hongfang Liu, PhD, vice president of learning health systems at UTHealth Houston and a professor and D. Bradley McWilliams Chair at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics; and Licong Cui, PhD, associate professor at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics.

“The passage of Proposition 14 to fund DPRIT presents a bold and forward-looking commitment by the state of Texas to accelerate research to improve the brain health of all Texans,” Liu said. “As we work to build a unified national Alzheimer’s data ecosystem through ReCARDO, Texas’ investment positions our state as a critical partner providing advanced infrastructure, innovative analytic capabilities, and real-world evidence that will drive breakthroughs in understanding, treating, and ultimately preventing dementia.

“DPRIT will not only strengthen research capacity across Texas but also amplify our contributions to national efforts aimed at improving outcomes for patients, families, and communities through advanced data science, informatics, and AI innovations.”