Troiani-Sweeney Endowed Fund Lecture Series on October 21 Focuses on Community Implementation

Mary Mittelman

Posted by: Elizabeth Richardson on October 7, 2021, No Comments

Yvonne Troiani-Sweeney ’78 always had passion for the well-being of her patients. She dedicated her life to her nursing career that spanned 30 years after earning her bachelor’s degree in nursing from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania (ESU) and a graduate degree in nursing from Villanova. Her colleagues and patients became her second family. Nursing led her to leadership roles at what is now the Lehigh Valley Health Network, Franklin Square Hospital in Maryland, Albert Einstein Medical Center, and the Geisinger Health System. Wherever her occupation led her, she became an inspiration to others for the incredible level of care she delivered every day.

All of that changed ten years ago for Sweeney and her family, who live in Mountain Top, Pa. Diagnosed with a form of early onset dementia called posterior cortical atrophy, she set aside her career and focused her energy on the daily challenges she faced, alongside her loving husband, Chris, and her two sons, Christopher III and Michael.

Support came in many ways from Sweeney’s family. Her sister, Linda Niedbala ’83, with the help of her husband, Sam Niedbala ’82, started the Troiani-Sweeney Endowed Fund Lecture Series at ESU, which kicked off in March 2014. The Niedbalas wanted this initiative to be a lasting tribute to Sweeney’s devotion to others while making a significant contribution to the education of health care professionals and the community-at-large about the cognitive impairment associated with dementia and other diseases of a similar nature.

The lecture series will continue, for the ninth year, on Thursday, October 21 with a keynote address by Mary S. Mittelman, DrPh, titled “The NYU Caregiver Program: A Journey from Clinical Practice to Research to Community Implementation.” During the in-person event, Dr. Mittelman will present a recorded lecture with a live (virtual) Q&A following her presentation. Dr. Mittelman is a research professor of Psychiatry and Rehabilitative Medicine at NYU School of Medicine and the director of the NYU Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Family Support Program, which was launched in 2016 with funding from New York State to provide comprehensive services to family caregivers of people with dementia. Trained in psychiatric epidemiology, she has been developing and evaluating psychosocial interventions for people with cognitive impairment and their family members for more than three decades.

Dr. Mittelman was Principal Investigator of a randomized controlled trial of the NYU Caregiver Intervention (NYUCI), funded for 20 years by the National Institutes of Health, the results of which have been published widely. The study demonstrated that the NYUCI, a program that includes individual and family counseling, can improve the well-being of family caregivers and thereby help them to postpone nursing home placement of their relatives with dementia, thereby having a major impact on social and medical care costs. Since then, Dr. Mittelman has participated in numerous replications of the original randomized controlled trial, and in community translations of the NYUCI. To assure widespread use of evidence based psychosocial interventions in dementia, she has been disseminating research findings to both health care providers and the community at large and collaborating with community organizations. Studies of the NYUCI have been conducted in the United States, England, Australia, Canada, France and Israel. A model of the potential cost savings associated with the NYUCI led directly to funding of caregiver support programs throughout New York State, including the one directed by Dr. Mittelman at NYU.

In the past few years, Dr. Mittelman has expanded her research focus to interventions that include the person with dementia with the family caregiver. She conducted an evaluation of the Meet Me at MoMA program, and is the founder of The Unforgettables, a chorus for people with dementia with their family members, which rehearses and gives regular concerts in New York City.

The Troiani-Sweeney Endowed Fund Lecture Series will return to a face-to-face this year after being held virtually due to COVID-19 restrictions in 2020. The recorded lecture will be shown in the Niedbala Auditorium located inside Warren E. ’55 & Sandra Hoeffner Science and Technology Center at 6 p.m. A live (virtual) Q& A and a reception will follow the presentation. The event is open to the general public at no cost.

“This endowed lecture series is a tremendous gift to the university and to our medical community,” said ESU Interim President Kenneth Long.

To register for the event, please visit www.esufoundation.org/troiani-sweeney-lecture-series-2021. Space is limited for this event. For more information about the lecture series, please contact the College of Health Sciences at (570) 422-3425 or swerkheis4@esu.edu. Those interested in making a gift to the Troiani-Sweeney Endowed Fund Lecture Series may contact the ESU Foundation at esufoundation.org/givenow or call (570) 422-3333.