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Alzheimer’s Outreach to 5 Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Communities
The CNADC is pleased to collaborate with the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH www.idph.state.il.us), the Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly (CLESE www.clese.org), and the Alzheimer’s Association- Greater IL Chapter (www.alzheimers-illinois.org) on a Alzheimer’s Demonstration Grant from the Administration on Aging (AoA www.aoa.gov). The project focus is to provide Alzheimer’s education and access to services for 5 different Limited English Proficiency (LEP) communities in the Chicago area: Assyrian, Arabic, Bosnian, Hindi, and Urdu. IDPH was one of ten state agencies to receive an Alzheimer’s Demonstration Grant from the Administration on Aging to improve the responsiveness of home and community-based services to persons with dementia and their caregivers in July 2005. This new funding builds on a previous grant awarded in 2001 and completed in 2004, in which the CNADC collaborated with the same partners on a similar program focused on 5 different LEP communities: Chinese, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish.
The CNADC’s role over the 3-year grant cycle is to provide primary care physicians serving the 5 LEP communities with information and support on evaluation, treatment and care for persons with dementia and their families. The CNADC, CLESE, and a member of one of the ethnic agencies in the project visit the primary care physician and provide them with a 45 page informational manual specific to each language that includes sections on diagnostic guidelines for dementia, screening tools, caregiver tools, medications, and educational materials (see below for PDFs of screening tools available in other languages). As of August 2006, 16 physicians from the 5 communities were visited and provided the informational manual. The educational materials included in the manual were translated by CLESE into all 5 languages and are intended for distribution to patients, families and the communities at large. PDF files of the educational outreach materials are listed below. Also included are these materials in Chinese, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish, a result of the previous grant.
The CNADC works with the Alzheimer’s Association to presenting educational programs on AD to the general community and to staff members of the ethnic agencies serving the targeted groups.
These ethnic social service agencies are key partners to the success of the program:
As another benefit of the grant, the Alzheimer’s Association provides free enrollment into their "Safe Return" program, a national registry that alerts the community when a person with Alzheimer’s becomes lost and aids in locating them.
The CNADC is very excited to collaborate with our partners in bringing the issue of Alzheimer’s Disease to these communities in their respective languages.
For more information regarding this project, please contact Darby Morhardt at 312-908-9432 or d-morhardt@northwestern.edu.
Related Material:
- Educational materials for patients and families
- Dementia screening tools for health care professionals
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