African Americans And Alzheimer's Disease Summary

“African Americans and Alzheimer ’s disease: Role of Health Educators in Addressing this Silent Epidemic,” written by Deborah A. Fortune, PhD, MCHES Rosalyn Lang, PhD, Sharon Cook, PhD, Goldie S. Byrd, PhD, Is an article that focuses on the role of the health educator in relation to the awareness and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimer’s disease epidemic, health disparities amongst African Americans, and how health education are the main points that the article covers. I chose this article because it depicts exactly what I want to do when I graduate. The article also provides valuable information about an epidemic that plagues the African American Community. We have been talking about health disparities in class, which has influenced me to choose this article. I searched “health educator’s role” and this article was one of the 194 articles that showed up, but because I saw my future profession and health disparities it made me more willing to pick this one.

It also taught me about the steps a health educator could take in order to “close the health disparity gap regarding Alzheimer’s disease and African Americans” (Fortune, Lang, Cook, & Byrd 2013). This stood out to me, because it went hand-in-hand with the Dream Job research that we had to do for the class. The article provided the same job responsibilities that I researched for the Dream Job assignment. It confirmed that the job responsibilities that I found were key in preventing disease and helping control the spreading of disease. I learned that Alzheimer’s affects African American’s disproportionately compared to other races. This information is important since I want to work in the heart of Atlanta and majority of the residents in that area are African