JoAnn Tschanz

Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services

Psychology

JoAnn Tschanz joined USU nearly twenty years ago and has been a crucial part of the department of Psychology. In her time as a faculty member, she has been both a principal investigator and co-investigator on numerous grants related to dementia. Her research focuses on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Her work on the Cache County Memory Study earned her and her colleagues the Lifetime of Exceptional Achievement Award from the Utah Alzheimer’s Association. JoAnn has been a leader in her field with her work on population-based studies of dementia progress, which has allowed her to gain a novel perspective on how care and environmental factors predict rates of dementia progression within three domains: cognition, function, and neuropsychiatric symptoms. As a result of her research, she has been developing a smartphone app with the intention of providing guidelines to help individuals make lifestyle decisions that can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Her publication record boasts 108 refereed journal publications, and to date her work has been cited over 8,000 times.