Utilizing public health strategies in a non-traditional setting: An intervention to combat the silent epidemic of alzheimer's disease in African americans

Issues: African Americans are disproportionately affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD), and suffer from the highest rates of latent diagnosis, reduced health outcomes. The socio-cultural and economic factors that contribute to the epidemic act as barriers to health access and early diagnosis, positive provider-patient interactions, and the willingness to refer patients to seek out clinical studies. The greatest challenge in mitigating the Silent Epidemic is the great lack of awareness about the disease, not only in the African American community, but amongst “professionals”.

Description: The senior Capstone project involved a multifaceted interventional approach, involving the development and implementation of cost-effective and culturally appropriate health communications, educational materials, and an Outreach program at a non-traditional public health setting; a biomedical research facility.

Lessons Learned: Collateral materials were found to be appropriate for targeting African American audiences. Feedback was obtained from professionals who underwent the program's cultural competency training; helping to demonstrate that this audience was effectively exposed to topics about the need for culturally competency training and how it reduces health disparities, and can be used to improve outreach and recruitment activities.

Recommendations: Implementing an outreach program at a medical research facility was a novel strategy for mitigating the AD epidemic and underrepresentation of African Americans in clinical research, in that, it shows that outreach efforts carried out at non-traditional settings are possible and will prove to be beneficial to targeted populations.