Wisconsin’s only bilingual memory clinic is partnering with the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health for a new elective course aimed at boosting doctor training, prevention and treatment to help with dementia in Latino communities.
Dr. Maria Mora Pinzon, an assistant professor of medicine at UW, leads the research team collaborating with the Latino Geriatric Center Memory Clinic. On WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” Mora Pinzon highlighted the center’s over 17 years of experience of working with older Latino adults who are suffering from dementia.
Health care workers from the center will train medical students in the class on cultural competence and communication strategies, as well as give examples on Spanish-based memory screenings.
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“That’s an experience that we hope the students will be able to see, building on all of that amazing knowledge and organizational memory on how we treat Latinos,” she said. “What are the barriers that they experience? How do we involve the families in the process in a way that is not only welcome but also useful in this journey?”
The course begins with the fall semester.
Latinos are 1.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with dementia than white Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. And Mora Pinzon said the number of Latinos diagnosed with dementia is expected to rise by 900 percent over the next 30 years.
The Latino Geriatric Center Memory Clinic is a part of Milwaukee’s United Community Center. Shary Pérez, research program coordinator with the clinic, told “Wisconsin Today” that her memory clinic’s staff all speak English and Spanish. She added that most staff are also Latino themselves, which helps them understand Latino patients when diagnosing them.
Pérez said Latino culture carries a perception that becoming more forgetful is just a normal part of aging. She hopes the partnership between the clinic and the UW medical school class will broaden understanding about dementia to expand care and diagnosis for more patients.
“[The center] is a space that feels culturally appropriate and that the staff is prepared to serve them in a way that takes into consideration all of the things that come into the diagnosis,” Pérez said. “Things besides just the diagnosis, like language, culture and the way of talking to them and explaining things in a way that they can understand.”
One example that Mora Pinzon gave is how the Spanish language can vary drastically from dialect to dialect depending on where a person is from.
A common memory test for patients is to name 10 words, like fruits or vegetables. But if the health care provider isn’t familiar with Latino culture and its differences, they might miss how the words some people use for vegetables differ from region to region.
“Another example is, in some countries, there might be houses built on rivers and lakes,” she said. “If you ask somebody, ‘Could you draw a house?’ And they draw a river under the house, you might think as a provider that they are confused, when it turns out that maybe they are just remembering homes from their childhood.”
