Black/African American Caregivers of Older Adults Living with Dementia: Podcast with Fayron Epps and Karen Moss
The proportion of people living with dementia who identify as Black/African Americans is on the rise, and so too are the proportion of caregivers who identify as Black/African American.\xa0 As our guests talk about today, caregiving for people living with dementia takes a tremendous toll, and when this toll is set atop the challenges of racism in all its forms, the reality of caregiving while Black can be overwhelming.
Today we talk with Fayron Epps and Karen Moss, two nurse researchers who are focused on improving the experience of Black/African American caregivers of persons living with dementia.\xa0 We talk in particular about:
-
Terminology.\xa0 Acknowledging that the most sensitive terms shift over time, what terms are they using today and why? Black? African American? Black/African American?\xa0 We also learn that the term stakeholder, so common in research, should be avoided for its early usage as White colonialists staked out land taken from Native American peoples.\xa0
-
Why a focus on Black/African American caregivers and people with dementia? Why should interventions be culturally tailored for this group?\xa0
-
Feyron has centered her work in Black/African American faith communities and churches - a program she titled Alter.\xa0 Why this focus?
-
Karen has a Cambia Sojourns award to pilot an intervention in which Black/African American former caregivers are trained to provide peer support to current caregivers (Peer2Care).\xa0 This seems like a triple win - the bereaved former caregiver has the opportunity to be generative, share their story, and give back; the current caregiver connects with someone similar who listens when so many people are tuning them out; the person with dementia benefits from the caregiver\u2019s improved sense of self-efficacy, decreased loneliness/social isolation, and better coping overall.
-
Why are nurse researchers in particular critical to the study of these issues?
And Karen brings a tambourine in the studio for I\u2019ll Fly Away (see YouTube version)!
-@AlexSmithMD
\xa0
\xa0