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How do people living with dementia in underrepresented communities gain greater access to improved care?
Kirsten Corazzini, Ph.D.
University of Maryland
Baltimore, MD - United States
Background
Person-centered dementia care is a way of providing care focused on knowing the unique person through respectful close relationships that foster normalcy, choice, purpose, belonging, security and strengths. Studies show that this form of care can reduce disease symptoms and improve the mental health of people living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias. However, many individuals most in need of such care, including those from under-resourced groups, do not have access to it. One barrier to person-centered care is the need to offer personal medical information – information necessary for developing an individualized care plan. Blacks/African American individuals, Hispanics/Latino individuals and other ethnic groups often associate the sharing of medical data with historic discrimination and harm. To advance person-centered care in these communities, methods to share information must acknowledge historic harms and be culturally appropriate.
Research Plan
Dr. Kristen Corazzini and team will study how information sharing can be improved and better utilized in low-resource communities. To understand how such communities perceive information sharing, they will interview in four diverse long-term care homes, care providers, as well as people with dementia and their family members. This information will lead to the development of culturally sensitive methods of collecting and sharing personal information for person-centered care.
Impact
Dr. Corazzini’s study could offer a cost-effective tool for expanding the use of person-centered care. Better access to such care could, in turn, improve the health and well-being of people from groups most severely impacted by Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
The ARCOM Grant Program was developed jointly with Leveraging an Interdisciplinary Consortium to Improve Care and Outcomes for Persons Living With Alzheimer’s and Dementia (LINC-AD).
For more information on LINC-AD please visit: https://alz.org/linc-ad
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