PLAN: Dementia Literacy Education and Navigation for Korean Elders with Probable Dementia and their Caregivers

尽管痴呆症的患病率较高，但美国的少数民族老年人诊断不足， 比他们的白色同伴更容易得不到适当的照顾。早期发现痴呆症可以使 向社区居住老年人早期痴呆症护理的过渡，可能会延迟或减缓老年痴呆症的恶化。 认知功能和功能性残疾，使家庭能够充分规划潜力 痴呆症的挑战目前，人们对如何有效识别未确诊的 在为不同种族和少数民族服务的社区环境中可能患有痴呆症的个人 以及如何将他们过渡到医疗保健系统，以进行必要的诊断随访和护理， 痴呆这项拟议的研究通过关注痴呆症评估来解决关键的差距， 在一个增长最快的少数民族人口的后续行动-韩裔美国人（KA）。我们 协作，跨学科的研究团队有超过10年的社区为基础，参与 在KA社区的研究经验，并为当前的应用奠定了基础。特别是， 我们进行了首项以社区为基础的流行病学研究， KA老年痴呆症。此外，我们成功地培训了双语社区卫生工作者， 获得证据支持使用社区卫生工作者评估社区痴呆症的可行性和有效性- 居住在韩国的老人，并促进与可能患有痴呆症的KA老人的医疗服务联系， 痴呆症，同时改善照顾者的心理结果。为此，我们的研究目标是确定 社区居住的韩国老年人可能患有痴呆症，并测试痴呆症识字训练的效果 和导航援助，将受影响的韩国老年人及其照顾者过渡到 保健系统提供充分的诊断跟踪和护理。CHW已被用于消除健康 资源贫乏社区的差距，并取得积极成果。采用经过训练的CHW进行认知 健康是一种新的战略方法，它可以高度适用于许多语言和/或社会孤立的人， 资源有限的种族/少数民族社区。

Despite a higher prevalence of dementia, ethnic minority elders in the U.S. are underdiagnosed and at greater risk of not receiving appropriate care than their white counterparts. Early detection of dementia allows for a transition to early dementia care for community-dwelling elderly that may delay or slow deterioration of cognitive functions and functional disabilities and enable families to adequately plan for the potential challenges of dementia caregiving. Currently, little is known about how to effectively identify undiagnosed individuals with probable dementia in community-based settings that serve diverse racial and ethnic minorities and how to transition them into the health care system for necessary diagnostic follow-up and care for dementia. This proposed research addresses the critical gaps by focusing on dementia assessments and follow-up in one of the fastest-growing ethnic minority populations—Korean Americans (KAs). Our collaborative, interdisciplinary research team has more than 10 years of community-based, participatory research experience in the KA community and has laid the groundwork for the current application. In particular, we have conducted the first community-based epidemiological study which estimated the prevalence of dementia among KA elders. Moreover, we successfully trained bilingual community health workers (CHWs) and obtained evidence to support the feasibility and efficacy of using CHWs to assess dementia in community- residing Korean elders and promote linkage to medical service for dementia among KA elders with probable dementia while improving caregiver psychological outcomes. To this end, the goals of our study are to identify community-residing Korean elderly with probable dementia and to test the effects of dementia literacy training and navigation assistance by CHWs to transition affected Korean elders and their caregivers into the healthcare system for adequate diagnostic follow-up and care. CHWs have been used to eliminate health disparities in resource-poor communities with positive outcomes. The adoption of trained CHWs for cognitive health is a new strategic approach which could be highly applicable to many linguistic and/or socially-isolated racial/ethnic minority communities with limited resources.