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Dealing with Dementia in Minority Populations

By Athan Bezaitis
                       
A conference on how to improve outreach strategies and assessment methods to a diverse population affected by dementia was held last Friday, May 19th in the USC Davis School auditorium.  Titled Ethnicity and Dementia: Outreach and Assessment, it was attended by over 100 people, most of whom were community-based health care professionals, including physicians, physician assistants, nurses, social workers and psychologists who provide care to the elderly.   

Dr. Donna L. Yee, Executive Director of the Asian Community Center in Sacramento, California, was the morning’s first keynote speaker.  She discussed ways to respond to diversity in work environments involved with elder care.  In a community such as Sacramento, with a wide-ranging Asian population comprised of different levels of English fluency, the challenge of responding to different cultures is immense.  She described several classes taught at her center such as yoga and painting that keep seniors active in a universal language of motion rather than words. 

“We need to break away from the traditional methods of communicating to the elder community in order to have a better impact,” Dr. Yee said. 

Diane Katz, MPH, MA (left) from UCLA AOC Education Core, speaks with her collegue, Denise Gutierrez (right).

She stressed a strategy that would create programs responsive to ideas, beliefs and needs of diverse populations of older persons and family caregivers.

The second speaker was Dr. Jennifer Manly, Assistant Professor at Columbia University Medical Center.  Her presentation examined dementia assessment among ethnic minority elders.  Factors such as genetics, detection bias, cognitive reserve and cardiovascular disease are often used to explain why there is a higher rate of Alzheimer’s disease amongst African Americans and Hispanics.  However, her study found that literacy was the most powerful predictor of memory decline.  “High literacy skills are not associated with preservation of memory skills but rather a slowing of age-related decline,” Dr. Manly wrote in her presentation. 

Closing remarks were made by Margaret Gatz, Ph.D. of the USC Alzheimer Disease Consortium (USC ADRC) a co-sponsor of the event.  She encouraged audience members to complete their action plans, provided in their syllabus, which asked those in attendance to consider how they would apply what they learned in the work place.  Each of the conference attendees received in their materials a copy of a special series of articles entitled, “Assessment, Diagnosis and Interventions in Culturally Diverse Older Populations with Alzheimer Disease: Research Directions.”  Reprinted with permission from the periodical, Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders, the collection of articles included writings by Dr. Gatz and conference speaker, Dr. Manly.

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The event attracted over 100 people, most of whom were community-based health care professionals, including physicians, physician assistants, nurses, social workers and psychologists who provide care to the elderly.   

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