The disproportionate impact of Alzheimer’s disease on people of color and women is creating ripple effects across communities and our nation, limiting economic opportunity and straining health systems. In response, UsAgainstAlzheimer’s has developed the National Alzheimer’s Disease Index®, a new tool, to help public health practitioners, researchers, drug developers, communities and policymakers identify, visualize and address Alzheimer’s health disparities. It will help UsAgainstAlzheimer’s and its partners increase awareness, improve clinical practice, increase research diversity and ultimately improve health outcomes among underserved populations living with Alzheimer’s disease.
The National Alzheimer’s Disease Index is a public health tool that aggregates Medicare data and enables the field to visualize and analyze Alzheimer’s health statistics by geography and by demographics. Guided by an interdisciplinary working group of experts, the tool will help catalyze the health system change needed to advance health equity in Alzheimer’s research and health services.
A new data brief builds on the report, Place & Brain Health Equity: Understanding the County-Level Impacts of Alzheimer’s, by identifying the congressional districts that overlap with the 25 counties with the highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s among Black and Latino Americans across the United States.
This report, developed with the Urban Institute using the National Alzheimer’s Disease Index, analyzes the county-level impacts of dementia and explores the social inequities present in counties highly impacted by Alzheimer’s among Blacks and Latinos. Our report calls for an increased focus on understanding the relationship between place, the social determinants of health, and dementia risk to promote brain health equity across the lifespan.
