HHS Must Act Boldly to Help African-Americans Fight Alzheimer's Disease

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should take action to help African-Americans in its mission to implement the principles of the Building Our Largest Dementia Infrastructure for Alzheimer's (BOLD) Act, reports University of Southern California Professor Karen D. Lincoln in Stat . The act authorizes $100 million over five years and instructs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish public health infrastructure to fight Alzheimer's, which disproportionately affects African-Americans. A portion of BOLD funding will be channeled into public and nonprofit private entities like state, tribal, and local health departments, as well as to associations and universities, under cooperative service agreements. These agreements mandate that funding recipients set up or support regional centers to address Alzheimer's and related dementias. The HHS secretary is allowed to "give preference to applications that focus on addressing health disparities, including populations and geographic areas that have the highest prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias," as part of these agreements. "The HHS secretary has an opportunity to fulfill the BOLD Act's promise by doing something Congress didn't do — mandate that representatives from underserved communities be part of the decision-making process," Lincoln notes. "People from small human service agencies, churches, community health coalitions, and community organizations must be involved in deciding how Alzheimer's funds are allocated."