Addressing Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Disparities: The American Indigenous Cognitive Assessment (AMICA)

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The AMICA project is a five-year (2022-2027) grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with funding through the National Institute on Aging (NIA) (R01AG074231). The AMICA project aims to develop a culturally appropriate dementia evaluation toolkit with American Indian communities. The AMICA toolkit comprises four instruments:

 

(1) A cognitive assessment (e.g., test used to determine potential deficiency in reasoning, thinking, or learning abilities)

(2) Caregiver report of symptoms of dementia

(3) Evaluation of depression symptoms

(4) Inventory of changes in activities of daily living (ADLs)

The toolkit will be based on reviews of existing clinical tools to assess dementia including the Canadian Indigenous Cognitive Assessment (CICA), the Australian Kimberly Indigenous Assessments for Depression (KICA depression), Activities of Daily Living (KICA-ADL), and a Caregiver Report (KICA-Carer).
 

The AMICA toolkit is being developed by Drs. Kristen Jacklin (PI) and Wayne Warry (Co-I) at Memory Keepers Medical Discovery Team (MK-MDT) in partnership with the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota, Drs. Carey Gleason (MPI) and Megan Zuelsdorff (Co-I) at the University of Wisconsin Madison with the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, and Drs. Tassy Parker (MPI) and Nancy Pandhi (Co-I) with a large urban Indigenous population through the First Nations Community HealthSource in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our goal is to create one toolkit that is acceptable and valid at all three sites.