AdventHealth Research Institute VP Helps Care Partners Keep Their Heads Above Water When Supporting Someone with Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia
The decision to step up and support someone navigating dementia-related brain changes is a weighty one. It’s a choice with its own undertow, often pulling Care Partners into roiling emotional waters.
Bombarded by waves of complex loss, perplexing questions, and sudden changes, the person providing care can quickly become burnt-out, dejected, and isolated.
Enter Rob Herzog. He throws lifebuoys to the otherwise stranded, offering a hand and the tools required to continue the swim.
As AdventHealth’s Vice President of Research Operations and the Nicholson Center, and the Alzheimer’s & Dementia Resource Center’s Board Chair, Herzog is a careful steward of Central Florida’s compassionate, expert-led caregiving support.
His goal is to ensure that these resources reach more community pockets, so that everyone is equipped to handle the symptoms afflicting so many Central Floridians.
“We are losing mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and colleagues to this (Alzheimer’s) disease at an alarming rate,” Herzog wrote recently for the Orlando Sentinel. “In a 2023 report from Rush University, both Orange and Osceola counties were ranked in the top 100 counties for Alzheimer’s prevalence.”
This means that even if you haven’t been plunged into Care Partnership yourself just yet, you likely have neighbors, coworkers, or acquaintances who have already started the journey.
Herzog regularly encounters some of these grief-stricken caretakers and companions who enter AdventHealth’s Neuroscience Center seeking direction, information, and understanding.
“Our memory care team is able to share community resources, talk to them about next steps in preparing for the future and help manage behaviors,” he wrote in his commentary. “We provide psychosocial support to both the patient and caregiver and, more importantly, let them know they are not on this journey alone.”
His Alzheimer’s & Dementia Resource Center involvement echoes that desire to decrease isolation.
“ADRC’s efforts to scale and make our classes even more accessible through investments in digital technology is something that we’re excited to move into in the coming year and beyond — to make sure that our community locally, and perhaps beyond, has easier access to some of the training that we do,” he said.
He is excited, too, about ADRC’s national fundraiser this year because the event will deepen and expand the organization’s growing footprint.
For Herzog, this work is deeply personal.
“Many of us who serve on the board have that personal connection to Alzheimer’s or dementia, and I am no exception from that standpoint,” he said. “I lost my father to Alzheimer’s Disease.”
Herzog’s father, Bob, was a hardworking family man and profoundly giving, passionate about supporting the Boys and Girls Clubs.
“He was just a beautiful human,” Herzog recalled. “He was always in my corner.”
Bob Herzog’s mild cognitive impairment evolved into Alzheimer’s in 2017.
“His journey with Alzheimer’s was probably about two years,” Herzog said. “As sufferers of this disease go, it was probably merciful in some ways because it progressed very quickly.”
He also noted that his parents had planned ahead, so they had support that not everyone has readily available.
That lack of preparation, knowledge, and resources underscores ADRC’s importance.
“It comes with so much of this early grief and complex loss of the person that you knew,” Herzog said. “Having an entity like ADRC, that is the combination of compassion and expertise, is what individuals and families in our community need, in spades.”
Herzog’s career reflects his desire to amplify his community’s health and connectedness, creating wealth in the way that he understands it.
“Being rich, and what makes you rich, is who you have beside you,” he said. “And that is what I believe the Alzheimer’s & Dementia Resource Center is all about. People should not go through this kind of life changing experience alone.”