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，但美国少数族裔老年人被低估的程度更高 与白人同龄人相比，他们有可能得不到适当的护理。及早发现痴呆症有助于 过渡到早期痴呆症护理社区居住的老年人可能会延缓或减缓病情恶化 认知功能和功能残疾，并使家庭能够充分规划潜在的 痴呆症护理的挑战。目前，人们对如何有效地识别未确诊病例知之甚少。 在服务于不同种族和少数民族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，以进行必要的诊断跟踪和护理 痴呆症。这项拟议的研究通过关注痴呆症评估和 对增长最快的少数族裔人口之一--韩裔美国人(KAS)的后续行动。我们的 协作、跨学科的研究团队有10年以上的社区基础、参与性 在KA社区的研究经验，为目前的应用奠定了基础。特别是， 我们进行了第一项以社区为基础的流行病学研究，估计了艾滋病的患病率 家族人中的老年痴呆症。此外，我们还成功地培训了双语社区卫生工作者和 获得的证据支持使用社区健康服务评估痴呆症的可行性和有效性- 居住在韩国的老年人并促进与可能患有痴呆症的KA老年人的医疗服务联动 在改善照顾者心理结果的同时患痴呆症。为此，我们研究的目标是确定 社区朝鲜族老年疑似痴呆症及痴呆症识字训练效果检验 和CHW的导航援助，将受影响的韩国老年人和他们的照顾者过渡到 提供适当的诊断跟踪和护理的医疗保健系统。CHW已被用来消除健康 资源贫乏社区的差距，并取得了积极的成果。采用训练有素的CHW进行认知 健康是一种新的战略方法，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.