March 28, 2024 – Palm Health Foundation, Palm Beach County’s community foundation for health, has announced the appointment of Lisa Kirk Wiese, Ph.D., to its board of trustees. Dr. Wiese, associate professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, joins the 18-member board overseeing the foundation’s mission to inspire and fund solutions for better health in Palm Beach County through community collaboration.
Community collaboration is the hallmark of Dr. Wiese’s research and scholarly work to increase understanding, early detection, and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease in rural populations. Before her election to the board of trustees, she partnered with Palm Health Foundation and its Healthier Glades initiative to study and implement solutions to overcome rural health disparities. Dr. Wiese’s community-based participatory research in the Glades is led by a multidisciplinary group of local faith-based health educators. This powerful collaboration of community partners, launched through state and federal funding, and now sustained by Palm Health Foundation, is focused on empowering rural, older racially/ethnically diverse adults to age in place through dementia awareness, detection, and management.
“Dr. Wiese has brought knowledge, experience, and investment to Palm Beach County and our Glades region to empower and improve the lives of residents,” said Patrick McNamara, Palm Health Foundation president and CEO. “She includes community in every stage of her work, from training residents to collect health data, to profiling their contributions in her scholarly presentations and publications. Dr. Wiese exemplifies our belief in resident-led health solutions and will be a guiding voice on our board of trustees for years to come.”
Dr. Wiese is the recipient of over 5 million dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Florida Department of Health. She is the principal investigator for a recent five-year, $4.2 million R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging of the NIH in collaboration with the University of Miami, Colorado State University, and Washington State University to study “The Role of Air Quality and Built Environment in Social Isolation and Cognitive Function Among Rural, Racially/Ethnically Diverse Residents at Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease.” The project will involve 1,087 Glades region adults ages 45 and older who have not been previously diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. A key factor in the work has been the continuous engagement of rural community residents and organizations in the design, implementation, and evaluation of research to decrease dementia risk.
Dr. Wiese received her M.S. in Nursing from the University of Virginia, her Ph.D. in Nursing from Florida Atlantic University, and a post-graduate certificate in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Drexel University. She is board-certified in Advanced Public Health Nursing, Gerontological Nursing, and Rural Health Nursing. Dr. Wiese was selected as a 2021 Hartford Distinguished Educator in Gerontological Nursing and 2023 Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. She serves on the Florida State Health Improvement Plan taskforce and co-launched a new Rural Health Disparities workgroup of the Alzheimer’s Association Diversity/Disparities PIA of ISTAART. She was selected to attend the first annual Alzheimer’s Association Interdisciplinary Summer Research Institute (2021) and the 2023 IMPACT-AD training, related to her work with rural, racially/ethnically diverse older adults. This workgroup’s investigation into global rural health disparities was recently published in the Alzheimer’s and Dementia journal.
About Palm Health Foundation
Palm Health Foundation is Palm Beach County’s community foundation for health. With the support of donors and a focus on results, the foundation builds strong community partnerships, respects diverse opinions, advocates for its most vulnerable neighbors, and inspires innovative solutions to lead change for better health now and for generations to come. The foundation supports health equity for Palm Beach County residents of all backgrounds, heritage, education, incomes, and states of well-being. Palm Health Foundation has invested more than $93 million in Palm Beach County health since 2001. For more information about Palm Health Foundation, visit palmhealthfoundation.org or call (561) 833-6333.
