Tackling Alzheimer's Starts with a Focus on Latinos
Alzheimer’s doesn’t see color or speak a language. But getting a diagnosis and care does.
If you identify as Latino, chances are you have seen the disease and the disparities that come with it up close. Growing up in southeast Los Angeles, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia were unspoken fixtures in my everyday life. My mom was a nurse and case manager at Alta Med Health Services, Inc., caring for elderly Latinos in East Los Angeles. I watched her help countless patients navigate not just Alzheimer’s, but all the other health issues that accumulate in poor neighborhoods and take a toll on hardworking people who spent most of their lives caring for their families, with little time or money left over to care for themselves.
Then, while at med school at University of California, Los Angeles, it hit home. While I pursued a higher degree, my cousins put their own futures on hold—dropping out of activities and even selling their house to care for my aunt with Alzheimer’s. It was obvious what the disease cost their mom. But the quiet cost to my cousins and the ripple effect across our entire society of caregivers putting their lives on hold often gets missed.
As a young girl, Alzheimer’s wasn’t something we talked about openly in my community or in my family. As a practitioner, that all changed.
I have spent my career as an internal medicine physician treating Latino patients, and I currently serve as president of the National Hispanic Health Foundation after years of leading the National Hispanic Medical Association. This work has shown me firsthand that tackling Alzheimer's in Latino and other underserved communities isn’t a niche cause. It’s a public health challenge that touches all of us.
Now, the data is catching up to what many of our families already know. Latinos are about 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's and related dementias than non-Hispanic White Americans. We are among the least represented groups in clinical research, and the largest population in the country without health insurance. There's a higher incidence of chronic illness but too few bilingual doctors and nurses. Meanwhile, Latinos carry a disproportionately high caregiving load, often providing more hours of care, experiencing greater physical and mental strain, and managing higher financial hurdles than their non-Hispanic White peers.
The higher risk and lower access are not a coincidence. It’s time for our health system to catch up to who is actually getting sick and change the trajectory of Alzheimer’s.
First, we in the medical profession who are on the frontlines—scheduling the first tests and noticing the first signs—can help spark the change. We need to invest in training more Latino, Black, and other underrepresented students for healthcare careers so that the people providing the care better understand the people receiving it. And we need to incorporate culturally sensitive training into our education curricula so that even if a healthcare provider has a totally different lived experience, they have the skills, tools, and resources to provide the same level of care to all of their patients.
Second, we need our elected officials to provide the funding to make early detection equally accessible to all Americans, regardless of their background. Congress needs to pass the Alzheimer's Screening and Prevention Act (ASAP) Act, a bipartisan bill that would finally let Medicare cover new blood tests that can catch this disease years before symptoms appear. Congress should also pass the AADAPT Act, which would expand training for primary care providers so more of them are equipped to catch the signs early.
Finally, and fortunately, there is much we can do as individuals.
It starts with dispelling the myth that there’s nothing you can do about it. Reading, exercise, and healthy eating are as much a part of brain health as any prescription. Thanks to advances in medicine and science, there are treatments and drugs that can also mitigate the progression of the disease.
I am also asking our community to bring this disease out of the shadows. Silence doesn’t mean the disease spares us—it won’t. What it does is reinforce systems that were never built with Latinos and other disproportionately affected populations in mind. We need to talk about brain health in our homes and in our doctor's offices so families don't have to face a diagnosis in silence the way mine once did.
And then take it further: get involved. Advocacy only works when policymakers hear directly from us, through our own stories, not just statistics on a page.
You never know if or when this disease will enter your family's life. On the chance it does, I want every Latino family to find a system that meets them with support instead of silence—the way mine, and so many others, never did.
Dr. Elena Rios is president of the National Hispanic Health Foundation.
