PROJECT SUMMARY
Individuals from Hispanic/Latino backgrounds have a 50% increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD)
compared to non-Hispanic white individuals. With the changing demographic trends in the United States, the
prevalence of AD in the Hispanic/Latino population is expected to increase nine fold over the next 50 years. In
addition to the patient, the burden of AD takes a significant toll on the families of loved ones with dementia,
their communities, and the healthcare system. The difference in prevalence of AD is rooted in social disparities
rather than differences in genetic vulnerability between Hispanic/Latino and white populations. It is critical to
identify the specific social determinants in Hispanic/Latino populations that can be leveraged to develop
culturally informed interventions that aim to maintain cognitive health and slow or prevent the progression
toward mild cognitive impairment and clinical dementia. Midlife is a particularly important, yet understudied,
period of the lifespan for cognitive aging. Prevention and intervention efforts are likely to be more effective if
started before significant neuropathology accumulates in the brain. The objective of this proposal is to identify
midlife factors and associated processes that contribute to health disparities in cognitive decline and risk of
dementia. We will leverage an existing longitudinal study of midlife adults – the California Families Project – to
couple more than 10 years of repeated assessments across middle adulthood with new data collection on the
risk/protective factors and cognitive outcomes. This project will test socioeconomic (e.g., education, financial
hardship), personality (e.g., neuroticism, conscientiousness), social (e.g., discrimination, social support), and
acculturation (e.g., cultural values, acculturative stress) risk/protective factors for cognitive functioning in midlife
Hispanic/Latino adults and the behavioral (e.g., physical inactivity, smoking), psychosocial (e.g., depressive
symptoms, delay discounting), and physiological (e.g., inflammation, cellular biomarkers) mechanisms that
explain these associations. This work will lead to new knowledge on midlife predictors of cognition and risk of
AD, identify social determinants and pathways that create and sustain health disparities for Hispanic/Latino
populations, and point to new prevention and intervention targets for promoting healthy cognitive aging in
midlife and beyond.