Lana Sargent, Ph.D., RN, FNP-C, GNP-BC
Pronouns: she/her
Associate Dean, Office of Practice and Community Engagement
Associate Professor
Department of Adult Health and Nursing Systems
Office of Practice and Community Engagement
Education
- Ph.D., Medical University of South Carolina
- M.S.N., Regis College
- B.S.N., Regis College
- B.S., University of Massachusetts - Amherst
Research/Scholarship Interests
As a tenured associate professor and the associate dean for practice and community engagement at the VCU School of Nursing, Lana Sargent, Ph.D., is interested in enhancing health equity by working with underserved community-dwelling populations and implementing processes affecting outcomes related to health behaviors and healthcare utilization.
Since 2013, she has provided clinical, research and educational expertise for the Mobile Health and Wellness Program (MHWP). In 2023, she became the lead project director of MHWP, a weekly wellness clinic serving individuals across the lifespan in nine urban and rural Virginia community sites. MHWP is an innovative, collaborative care coordination model that seeks to improve communities' health outcomes and enhance individuals' lives through translational research.
Sargent's research focuses on discovering the clinical and biological predictors for early detection and prevention of cognitive decline and physical frailty in older community-dwelling adults. She has published essential papers on the early predictors and putative mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and function ability in aging populations. As a result of research training in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics at NIH/NIA, she has expertise in applying measures that help distinguish between healthy aging and cognitive and physical decline.
Additionally, she has 20 years of clinical practice experience focused on the complex care of aging adults. This unique training and clinical experience providing care for community-dwelling older adults allows her to link her research to translational clinical practice. In particular, her experience providing care for community-dwelling older adults allows the results from her research to address social determinants of health (SDOH) and health disparities. As PI on several intramural and extramural grants, she leads several community-based dementia studies.
Area of Current Clinical Practice
As a geriatric and family certified nurse practitioner, Sargent has more than 20 years of clinical experience providing care for low-income minority community-dwelling older adults. Her clinical expertise has always been in caring for low-income minority, medically underserved populations. She was the associate medical director of a large community health center in Worcester, Mass., for more than 10 years before transitioning into an academic career. As the associate dean of practice and community engagement, she oversees the School of Nursing faculty practice model, collaborating with faculty to sustain and grow our clinical teaching, practice and scholarship in the VCU Health academic health system and with community practice partnerships.
Teaching
Sargent teaches courses in the doctoral program and incorporates the foundational topics of early research topic development, starting with the doctoral philosophy course in which students learn to develop their research phenomenon of interest. She advises students in the graduate Ph.D. program in independent research development courses and advises undergraduate research fellows. Sargent's research advising support includes large epidemiological data and clinical and community-based research studies, including health systems models of care.
Select Publications
- Sargent, L., Nalls, M., Singleton, A., Palta, P., Kucharska-Newton, A., Pankow, J., Young, H., Tang, W., Lutsey, P., Olex, A., Wendte, J. M., Li, D., Alonso, A., Griswold, M., Windham, B. G., Baninelli, S., & Ferrucci, L. (2023). Moving towards the detection of frailty with biomarkers: A population health study. Aging cell, e14030. Advance online publication.
- Sargent, L., Zimmerman, K.M., Mohamed, A., Barrett, M.J., Nawaz, H., Wyman-Chick, K., Mackiewicz, M., Roman, Y., Slattum, P., Russell, S., Dixon, D.L., Lageman, S.K., Hobgood, S., Price, E.T. (2023). Low-Income Older Adults’ Vulnerability to Anticholinergic Medication-Associated Frailty. Drugs & Aging, DOI:10.1007/s40266-023-01069-7
- Sargent, L., Lageman, S., Thacker, L., Russell, S., Mackiewicz, M., & Price, E. (2021). Socially Relevant Approaches to the Detection of Dementia in Minority Older Adults. Innovation in Aging, 5((Supplement_1)), 719–719.
- Sargent, L., Nalls, M., Amella, E., Mueller, M., Slattum, P., Bandinelli, S., Tain, Q., Legman, S., Singleton, A. (2020). Shared Mechanisms for Cognitive and Physical Frailty: A Model for Complex Systems. Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions e12027. Doi:10.1002/trc2.1207.eCollection 2020. PubMed PMID: 32685657
- Sargent, L., Mackiewicz, M., Roman, Y., Diallo, A., Russell, S., Falls, K., Zimmerman, K. M., Dixon, D. L., Prom-Wormley, E., Hobgood, S., Lageman, S. K., Zanjani, F., & Price, E. T. (2021). The Translational Approaches to Personalized Health Collaborative: Pharmacogenomics for African American Older Adults. In Clinical and Translational Science (Vol. 14, Issue 2, pp. 437–444). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Current Funded Grants
| Name of Grant | Role | Funding Agency | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile Health and Wellness Program | Lead Project Manager | HRSA | 6/1/2022 - 6/30/2026 |
| Life-space and Activity Digital Markers for Detection of Cognitive Decline in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: The RAMS Study | Co-MPI | NIH/NIA | 4/1/2023 - 3/31/2028 |
| Richmond Brain Health Initiative: Behavioral Health Intervention Health Coaching for Alzheimer’s and Related Disease Risk Reduction | Co-MPI | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | 9/1/2021 - 8/31/2024 |
| Alzheimer’s Disease Progression and Resiliency | PI | NIH/NIA/Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Disease (CARD) | 9/10/20 - 8/30/2025 |
Professional Service
Sargent is an affiliate faculty member of the School of Pharmacy's Geriatric Pharmacotherapy Program. She is the chair of the Virginia Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Commission and chair of the Statewide Data and Research Workgroup. She is the co-chair of The Gerontological Society of America Community Engaged Research Interest Group and is a reviewer for several NIH/NIA study sections.
Links
- Minding the Gap: Richmond Brain Health Initiative, MCV Foundation, 7/20/23
- How these VCU researchers are learning to detect Alzheimers, dementia early on, WTVR News 6, 2/28/24