Overview
This study will provide knowledge needed to create culturally- and socially- relevant brain health promotion and dementia prevention interventions to improve health literacy and health behaviors around brain health in the Latino population. Significant health inequities surround the incidence of dementia, timeliness of dementia diagnosis, severity of illness, and access to neurological treatment and care among minority and underserved racial/ethnic older adults.
Project Details
The proposed study uses ethnography, a qualitative research approach that focuses on understanding people’s values, behaviors, and beliefs, to explore brain health education and dementia prevention among vulnerable Latinos in the San Francisco Bay Area. The pilot project focuses on how culturally- and socially-mediated conceptions of the brain and aging shape understandings of healthy aging and dementia prevention in this community. Insights gained from ethnography, interpreted in collaboration with my mentors in the context of data collected from brain health experts, will provide a framework for prevention interventions that can be incorporated into future research and service projects.
