HABIT for Spanish Speakers:  Part 2, The Recruitment Strategy

Last week, we shared with you facts about the need for more evidence-based interventions for Spanish speakers with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In today's blog, we would like to update you on how recruitment for the pilot study on the Spanish translation and cultural adaptation of the Memory Support System (MSS) has been going.

For this pilot study, we are hoping to recruit 20 Spanish speakers and their partners. We initially sought to recruit only those diagnosed with MCI but, given the many barriers discussed last week (e.g., lack of healthcare access or English proficiency), it quickly became apparent that we could find very few Spanish speakers in Jacksonville who had been diagnosed. We then decided to also allow Spanish speakers aged 50 years or older with cognitive concerns to participate.

We then had to look beyond the Clinic to find our participants. A key to this has been working on outreach to the Hispanic community in Jacksonville, FL, to provide education in Spanish on MCI and information about our study. So far, we have:

• Partnered with the Alzheimer’s Association Central and North Florida Chapter, the Mayo Clinic Office of Health Disparities Research, the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and Community Center, and local Hispanic community leaders.
• Used media posts on Facebook and digital boards at Mayo Clinic Florida.
• Written communications in a local Hispanic newspaper and letters to Spanish-speaking healthcare providers.
• Given presentations at local churches and programs for English as second language students and for the U.S. citizenship exam as well as interviews at a local Hispanic TV channel.

As of today, we are excited to share with you that over 40 Hispanics have expressed interest in participating, and 4 participants and their partners have already completed the Spanish MSS training. We will continue delivering the MSS throughout the rest of 2019 and the first semester of 2020. We believe that this is an important step towards developing and promoting interventions that are linguistically and culturally appropriate for the Hispanic community.

Thank you to all our participants! If you have any ideas to help reach more people, let us know!