A Culturally-Relevant Approach to Reducing Dementia Caregiver Stress in an Underserved Population

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Asian Americans currently are the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S., thus, the number of Asian Americans with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their family caregivers will also increase. Surprisingly, very little intervention work has focused on addressing caregiver needs in this population. Specifically, a large gap exists in the development of interventions to reduce caregiver stress and little is known about how cultural diversity impacts caregiver stress and intervention outcomes. This Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) will give Dr. Meyer the skills, training, and mentoring necessary to conduct community-engaged interventions to reduce the burden of AD in culturally diverse family caregivers. The proposed mentored research activities for this K01 award are to refine and pilot test a theoretically-informed, culturally-relevant, community-based intervention informed by sociocultural stress and coping and social contextual models to reduce distress and enhance well-being in Vietnamese American dementia caregivers. By focusing on this large and underserved population, this K01 application is consistent with NIA Research Goal E: Improve our ability to reduce health disparities and eliminate health inequities among older adults. It als responds to the National Alzheimer's Project Act (NAPA) to involve more racially/ethnically diverse older adults in research and to develop effective services to support ethnically diverse families. This application includes experiential and research activities in three critical areas fo Dr. Meyer's career development: (1) knowledge of AD and associated dementias (e.g., risk factors, assessment and diagnosis, course) and cognitive impairment and how they affect families, (2) methodological skills and cultural knowledge to conduct community-engaged intervention research, including formal training in aspects of community-based participatory research (e.g. mixed methods) and enhanced knowledge of Vietnamese culture and language, and (3) theoretical and methodological skills necessary to design, implement, and analyze scientifically rigorous interventions for culturally diverse populations (e.g., design issues, longitudinal data analysis). Mentored research training will occur in the context of a focused research project with two aims: (1) Refine and manualize a culturally- informed intervention to reduce distress and enhance well-being in Vietnamese dementia caregivers, and (2) Examine the feasibility and acceptability of the pilot intervention in a randomized controlled trial. Completion of the proposed research and career development activities will generate data to inform the development of an R34 or R21 application and provide Dr. Meyer with the experience necessary to transition from observational/ descriptive to community-based intervention work. Dr. Meyer will leverage existing resources and expertise at three NIH-funded centers at UC Davis: the Alzheimer's disease Center, the Resource Center for Minority Aging Research, and the Clinical and Translational Science Center. These resources, along with the mentoring team's strong, collaborative relationships with local community-based organizations will provide an enriched environment that will help Dr. Meyer to be a successful and independent investigator.