Building the Curriculum: Training Clinicians to Prescribe Anti-Amyloid Therapy

This episode, titled 'Building the Curriculum: Training Clinicians to Prescribe Anti-Amyloid Therapy,' featured panelists discussing the following critical question:

What specific competencies — such as biomarker interpretation, ARIA monitoring, and patient counseling — would a general neurologist, advanced practice provider (APP), or primary care physician (PCP) need to demonstrate before prescribing or co-managing a patient on anti-amyloid therapy for Alzheimer's disease, and do formal credentialing pathways currently exist?

Led by the moderator, the expert neurology and primary care panelists examined what an ideal training curriculum looks like. Jennifer Woodward, MD, MPH, described a multidimensional model built around a 90-minute self-paced continuing medical education (CME) refresher on pathophysiology and blood-based biomarkers, electronic health record order sets with built-in clinical decision support, live one-on-one onboarding, and an e-consult safety net for complex cases. Scott Joy, MD, MBA, FACP, added that case-based, peer-reviewed learning through shared e-consult sessions helps clinicians recognize diagnostic patterns, but cautioned that inflated expectations about drug efficacy and lingering therapeutic nihilism among some colleagues remain real barriers to adoption — and that no formal credentialing pathway yet exists to standardize this training.

Throughout the conversation, the experts provided a comprehensive reflection on the field and the factors that may shape how clinicians approach care moving forward.

In the next episode, 'Rural Alzheimer's Disease Education: Overcoming Outdated Beliefs and Building Infrastructure,' panelists continue their discussion on Alzheimer's disease and highlight the education and infrastructure challenges of building a treatment program from scratch in a rural, single-physician practice.