Maplewood Senior Living Upgrades Memory Care With Larger Focus On Early Detection, Personalization

Maplewood Senior Living is adapting its memory care program to focus more on early cognitive health intervention, dietary changes and personalizing engagement.

Maplewood is in the early stages of a partnership with clinical neuropsychologist Dr. Cara Pendergrass on integrating brain health science into daily senior living operations to align with the company’s recently launched Aura assisted living to memory care transition care level at its Embasy Row community in Washington, D.C.  

“It can really support those changes in mental health and cognitive decline and we can give them a much more customized level of programming,” said Maplewood Vice President of Sales and Marketing Jenna Anderson.

That includes adding things like Mediterranean diet to promote healthy eating, along with increased fitness programming to improve brain health for Maplewood memory care residents. These factors all have “a big impact on cognition, ” Anderson said.

Executives with Maplewood’s newly opened Embassy Row property in Washington, D.C. recently attended the 2026 Global Brain Health Initiative to spark inspiration for improving its assisted living and memory care operations. Early detection of cognitive change and dementia was a big topic at the event.

Senior living providers are using early detection tools to improve residents’ quality of life while also offering insight into whether they may have a genetic predisposition to dementia or other brain-related conditions. This is in the name of providing deeper personalization of health and wellness services in high acuity operations.

Integrating new fitness programming, emphasizing social connections and increased access to mental health services can help improve memory care programming, Anderson said. Senior living providers are also using fitness and wellness programming to improve health and resident satisfaction.

Maplewood also has a partnership with NYU Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation for a horticulture therapy program to engage assisted living and memory care residents with nature. Spending time outdoors is linked to both cognitive health and mental health, according todata from the American Psychological Association. 

Clubs for assisted living and memory care residents have helped improve socialization in memory care communities at Maplewood, Anderson said.

“I am very excited about these because exercise, nutrition, sleep, social connection and activity are elements we have seen repeatedly in research not only improve quality of life, based on evidence in brain volume and brain structure,” Pendegrass said.

Integrating brain health into daily operations is one way operators can improve their clinical capabilities and resident life engagement, Pendegrass said.

By having transition programs between assisted living and memory care, Anderson said this can bring flexibility into a sector where clinical and safety demands.

“The future of brain health is not just medical, it’s environmental, it’s social, it’s nutritional and behavioral,” Anderson said. “It was largely clinical and we want to infuse those into our daily routines,” Anderson said.

Through applying brain health research into memory care programming, Pendergrass said senior living providers can improve quality of life for those living with cognitive change.

“Providers are being more dynamic and interacting and taking information that we know is effective and applying it,” Pendergrass said.

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