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Can cognitive screening assessments be adapted to improve the diagnosis of dementia in older individuals in Ethiopia?
Yared Zewde
Addis Ababa University
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Background
In low- and middle-income countries, cognitive impairment is often accepted as part of normal aging and can lead to older individuals with dementia remaining undiagnosed or diagnosed at later stages. As the population of adults aged 60 years and older begins to rise in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a need to develop culturally appropriate screening tools that could be used to identify individuals with early dementia in this region. However, standardized cognitive tests to diagnose dementia often do not consider the cultural and language needs across different cultures. Dr. Yared Zewde proposes a study to translate and culturally adapt the common cognitive assessment test, Tablet-based Cognitive Assessment Tool-Brain Health Assessment (TabCAT-BHA) to diagnose individuals with dementia in Ethiopia.
Research Plan
Dr. Zewde and colleagues plan to first translate the TabCAT-BHA cognitive screening assessment into Amharic, one of the most common languages spoken in Ethiopia. The team will determine the accuracy of the new Amharic-translated TabCAT-BHA tool, named BHA-Am, in hospital settings in Ethiopia. The researchers will first recruit and administer the test to 10 individuals aged 50 years and older who are cognitively unimpaired to help examine the cultural appropriateness of the BHA-Am tool. Once the final version of the assessment tool has been approved, the team will recruit over 100 older adults with a range of cognition and education levels to assess the accuracy of this method across a diverse range of individuals.
Impact
If successful, this study could offer a novel screening tool for potentially improving and establishing consistent early diagnosis of dementia in older individuals across Ethiopia.
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