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Alzheimer's Plan Helps Caregivers

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Cathy Rickel, who has Alzheimer’s disease, enjoys hearing her son Brad play the trumpet. Photo by Chris Hinkle



By Ford Burkhart

Cathy Rickel smiled as she listened to her son Brad play the trumpet.

“He was always musical,” she recalled with pride during a social hour at an adult day care health center in Tucson, where Brad was entertaining her and several others who have Alzheimer’s disease.

How Brad, 29, and Cathy, 65, got there illustrates the value of having a network of resources for family caregivers. After Cathy’s husband, Del, died last year, Brad consulted a string of websites and agencies before discovering the downtown Regency Senior Club, which now helps him balance the care of his mother with his work and study.

Making those connections easier is among the goals of the Arizona Alzheimer’s State Plan, launched in September 2015.

The plan, subtitled “A Framework for Action,” resulted from a five-year task force of more than 100 stakeholders, including social service organizations such as AARP Arizona, government agencies, physicians, health plan agencies and volunteer groups.

“We intend for this to be a living document,” said James Fitzpatrick, cochair of the Arizona Alzheimer’s task force and the program and advocacy director at the Alzheimer’s Association Desert Southwest Chapter, based in Phoenix, which covers Arizona and southern Nevada.

“We want all the communities to let us know where it should go from here,” he said.

The plan recognizes that Alzheimer’s is one of the leading causes of death in Arizona, affecting 130,000 people over 65. That number will likely rise to 200,000 by 2025.

For now, the plan focuses on five target audiences: caregivers and those living with the disease; volunteers and faith-based communities; policymakers; educators and researchers; and health and human service workers.

The plan envisions help for caregivers in five areas:

  • Information: Families can learn from many groups in their communities as information programs become available around the state.
  • Support: The plan stresses the reality of cognitive functioning among those with advanced Alzheimer’s, emphasizing that each person deserves “dignity and respect as a person, even without the cognitive ability to know their surroundings.”
  • workforce: The plan supports and promotes workforce training in skills needed to respond to, say, a combative client “who is unsure who you are,” Fitzpatrick said. The task force will also push for expanded training away from Tucson and Phoenix, in regions where many residents are Native American, African American or Hispanic.
  • Research: To advance research and disseminate findings, the plan will coordinate input from experts at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Banner–University Medical Center in Tucson and other institutions.
  • Everyday life: The plan will link agencies to address needs of everyday life. For example, if you have dementia and can’t drive and you live in the desert, how can you find help with obtaining food and meeting basic needs?

Task force member Lisa O’Neill, director of education for the University of Arizona Center on Aging in Tucson, said the plan is intended “to build an awareness of what each of us can do to help offer hope to those directly impacted.”

Ford Burkhart is a writer living in Tucson.

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