A Screening Protocol to Identify Older Adults With Dementia and Their Family Caregivers in Northern Vietnam

Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) pose a growing public health challenge in Vietnam. This study describes a community-based screening protocol to identify older adults and their primary family caregivers in Hai Duong province to support recruitment for a caregiver intervention clinical trial.

Village health workers were trained to identify older adults at risk for dementia using a simplified tool adapted from the California Alzheimer's Disease Centers' Assessment of Cognitive Complaints Toolkit. High risk individuals were then invited to participate in a clinical assessment at a local health station that included medical history, cognitive tests, and behavioral symptom evaluation. Family caregivers of those diagnosed with dementia were then identified and screened using the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI-4), with those scoring ≥ 6 considered eligible for the clinical trial.

Of 1,267 at risk older adults identified by village health workers, 1,198 were screened and assessed, with 768 meeting criteria for dementia. From these cases, further caregiver outreach and screening yielded 350 eligible caregivers for the clinical trial.

The study demonstrates that a screening protocol utilizing village health workers is effective in the identifying older adults with ADRD and their family caregivers in a low-resource setting. This model may be useful for other low and middle-income countries where dementia rates are increasing and under-diagnosis remains a major public health issue.