In 1989, Hendrie assembled a collaborative research team from IU and the University of Manitoba (Canada) to investigate whether the rate of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease differed between industrial and non-industrial populations. Hendrie’s team, in its study of Cree Indians in northern Manitoba and Caucasian residents of Winnipeg, demonstrated a lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease among the non-industrial Cree.

Based on this early work in Canada, Hendrie established a collaboration with Benjamin Osuntokun of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria; together, they formed the Indianapolis-Ibadan Dementia Project. Their goal was to search for environmental, potentially modifiable, risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease by studying two populations now living in very different environments–African Americans living in Indianapolis and Yoruba Nigerians living in Ibadan. The project resulted in several important findings, suggesting that there may be environmental risk factors for the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Hendrie has continued to pursue cross-national studies into Alzheimer’s, forming a collaboration with Owen Morgan at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, to investigate risk factors for Alzheimer’s among Jamaicans of African descent. He also obtained a National Institute on Aging supplemental grant to conduct a pilot study of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in Eldoret, Kenya.

Hendrie’s studies expanded to China in 1996, when colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine Institute of Environmental Health and Engineering agreed to add a dementia pilot study to their collaborative work on fluoride exposure and bone fractures in southern Hebei and northern Henan provinces.

In addition, Hendrie has been influential in the development and use of psychiatric clinical assessment instruments internationally, in his capacity as an investigator on the World Health Organization Age-Associated Dementias Project.

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