Project Summary
Background: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are the most rapidly growing racial group of older Americans at risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), experiencing great health inequities due to language barriers, inadequate access to high-quality information, and a lack of culturally appropriate services. Vietnamese-American (VA) ADRD caregivers (CGs) and patients have limited ADRD knowledge/skills regarding how to identify patient-centered goals. CGs silently suffer health risks, feeling obligated to care for their elderly parents at all costs due to cultural stigma and traditional values. VA older adults typically reject advance care planning, believing that it would hasten their passing. VA CGs want to learn more about how to stay mentally healthy as they age, prevent ADRD, and get more education on caregiving and research. Increased knowledge and awareness of ADRD care/prevention and advance care planning will reduce health inequities among VA/AAPI stakeholders.
Proposed Solution: The project will take place in San Jose, California with some dissemination activities through Vietnamese TV, radio, and social media, and in-person activities at annual conferences to be held at the ICAN Family Resource Center, located inside the Vietnamese Cultural Center, 2072 Lucretia Avenue, San Jose.
Objectives:
- The short-term goal is to provide VA ADRD CGs and other stakeholders with relevant findings from PCORI-funded research that can inform their healthcare decisions.
- The long-term goal is to improve knowledge, attitudes, and behavior regarding ADRD prevention, care, and advance planning among Vietnamese CGs and other stakeholders so that they will become more engaged in PCOR/CER research in the long run.
Activities:
- Develop three three-minute video clips, three articles, and six radio talk shows to be broadcast on YouTube, Facebook, and websites to increase the reach of the evidence.
- Organize annual conferences to increase people's motivation to use/apply evidence.
- Create how-to materials and training about advance care planning in the Vietnamese community to increase people’s ability to use/apply evidence.
Outcomes and Output: The short-term outcome is for participants to identify the new ADRD knowledge gained that they can use to inform their healthcare decisions while the long-term outcome is for stakeholders to become more engaged with PCOR/CER research. The tangible outputs include three three-minute video clips, three articles, and six 10-minute radio talk shows that can be played over and over on social media (after the first run on TV and radio), a two-page how-to on advance care planning, and a list of insights and lessons learned on how to culturally tailor a program into Vietnamese for future reference
Stakeholder Engagement: The target audience consists of Vietnamese ADRD caregivers and other stakeholders including community members, patients, caregivers, professional health providers, community-based organizations, policy makers, and academic researchers who work with Vietnamese Americans. Feedback from stakeholders will be incorporated into the design, implementation, and evaluation of the program
Project Collaborators: The project has the support of Van Park, PhD, MPH (UCSF), as the academic collaborator, Lisa Goldman Rosas, PhD, MPH, as PCOR/CER advisor, Glenn Smith, PhD, ABPP-cn as PCOR/CER advisor, Rebecca Sudore, MD, as PCOR/CER advisor, Quyen Tiet, PhD, as academic/community advisor, Nam Pham as media/community advisor, the Vietnamese American Mental Health Network, and the Vietnamese Reach for Health Coalition.