Amplifying the voices of Hispanic Texans

Older hispanic couple hugging one another with smiles.

The power of community pláticas for dementia care

Sara Masoud, PhD, MPHIn summer 2023, the School of Nursing launched a series of community pláticas in South Texas, aiming to gather insights directly from residents about their needs and experiences with dementia.

These pláticas, or discussions, are vibrant cultural events featuring festive décor, music and food. They draw attendees from diverse backgrounds, including local residents, community health workers and health professionals. Their creation was sparked from an evolution of work Sara Masoud, PhD, MPH, and her team initiated during her time with the school’s Caring for the Caregiver program, established in 2016 by Carole White, PhD, RN, FAAN, and a team from the School of Nursing.

According to Masoud, assistant professor at the School of Nursing, there’s a significant disparity in dementia research representation.

“For example, Hispanics are one and a half times more likely and African Americans are twice more likely than non-Hispanic white individuals to develop dementia, but they are not well-represented in the related data,” she said.

With Hispanic Texans now the state’s largest demographic, Masoud’s and her team’s work becomes even more crucial. The pláticas serve as platforms for residents to voice their needs.

Hispanics are 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s compared to non-Hispanic white individuals

“We hear things like, ‘We need ambulance service and fire marshals.’ What we think of as basic resources, not necessarily dementia care, are what communities want first,” she said. “When we asked South Texans what they think is important to study, among the issues they identified they wanted to address was to raise awareness of dementia in their communities and find ways to make getting a diagnosis easier.”

Masoud said the South Texas region is one of the hardest hit in the country in terms of having the greatest number of counties with the highest incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.

“The prevalence of dementia in some counties of South Texas is almost a quarter of their population. Programs across our university and organizations in the community are working to address this,” she said.

Residents in South Texas also expressed a desire for nonpharmacological solutions for dementia’s behavioral symptoms.

“Often when people think of dementia research, they think it is primarily to inform drug development to treat Alzheimer’s disease, but we are hearing from those living in communities that are most impacted by dementia and they are not even there yet. They’re in need of programs, resources and interventions, not necessarily only pharmacological ones. Research in all of these areas is incredibly important,” Masoud said.

Masoud, who is Palestinian, said she understands the struggle of representation, as the category of Middle Eastern and North African has only recently been added to the U.S. census, which is another gap of representation in research. She is currently expanding her research to include focus on building evidence around experiences of dementia among Arab and Arab American communities in Texas.

“Up until now, people like me essentially didn’t exist in scientific representation,” she said. “So, we still have work to do, but hearing directly from the people in our region supports us to be leaders in the research and the care that impacts us.” Visit UTCaregivers.org to join the conversation.


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