Mora Pinzon lab and Milwaukee-based community center partner on med student elective
Preparing to meet rising Latino dementia care needs
A research team led by Maria Mora Pinzon, MD, MS, assistant professor, Geriatrics and Gerontology, is partnering with experts at the Latino Geriatric Center Memory Clinic—a service of the United Community Center in Milwaukee—on a new culturally competent elective course for medical students at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UW SMPH).
The elective is slated to pilot this year and is designed to allow medical students an opportunity to learn critical education, strategies and tools they can use to provide care for Latino individuals who experience difficulty accessing care for dementia due to language and cultural differences.
It takes about 15 years to train a doctor, so we need to start now to meet the demand that is coming.
Maria Mora Pinzon, MD, MS
This medical education topic is crucial for future generations of physicians because the number of Latinos impacted by dementia is expected to increase by 900% over the next 30 years, Dr. Mora Pinzon says.
“It takes about 15 years to train a doctor, so we need to start now to meet the demand that is coming,” she says. “There is no way for a person to get adequate medical care if their provider is not trained to understand the needs of the patient they are serving.”