Psychological and social support associations with mortality and cardiovascular disease in middle-aged American Indians: the Strong Heart Study

Volume atrophy in medial temporal cortex and verbal memory scores in American Indians: Data from the Strong Heart Study

“…Finally, exploring therapeutic interventions, including psychological, social, and community features that may improve cognitive resilience and delay or prevent development of AD or vascular dementia, may ameliorate some observed disparities, with potential to benefit American Indians and other Indigenous communities throughout the US. 50 Overall, this work represents a first step in evaluating detailed volumetric biomarkers associated with AD and vascular aging in an understudied population.…”

Nurse‐led models of care for metabolic syndrome in primary care: A scoping review

“…Lifestyle Medicine and the newly spawned Lifestyle Nursing are growing specialties that are dedicated to prevention and treatment of NCD using evidenced based lifestyle changes. They have identified the six pillars of health, which not only include, nutrition and physical activity (utilized in all included studies), avoidance of risky substances ( n = 1 study), stress reduction ( n = 2), but also emphasizes the importance of sleep, social connectedness which were not addressed in any of the included studies, despite their connection to metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease (Chasens et al, 2021; Larrabee Sonderlund et al, 2019; Suchy‐Dicey et al, 2022; Smiley et al, 2019; Xie et al, 2021).…”

Psychometric Properties of Controlled Oral Word Association (COWA) Test and Associations With Education and Bilingualism in American Indian Adults: The Strong Heart Study

“…Of these, education may have poorer contextual relevance in American Indian elders’ test performance than for other populations, such as NHW. Education is a proxy variable for baseline function, or crystallized function, which is not expected to change substantively after childhood; however, in American Indians, tenure of formal education is poorly correlated with crystallized intelligence (Suchy-Dicey et al, 2022), suggesting that formal educational experiences were of varying quality and/or that many American Indian elders obtained substantive learning outside of the classroom (Sayegh et al, 2014). The first U.S. Federal standards against forced removal of children for placement into residential schools or foster care were not established until the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1976 (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; Lynch, 1990), with a legacy of Indigenous trauma (Running Bear et al, 2019), depression, maladaptive behaviors (Enoch & Albaugh, 2017; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006), cultural and linguistic losses (Lynch, 1990), and premature illness and mortality (Jack & Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, 2000) affecting a majority of American Indians now as young as middle age.…”

“…In addition to higher likelihood of traumatic educational experiences, American Indians are also more likely to have shorter educational tenure, although this may be counterbalanced with extracurricular learning that is not captured in conventional measures of educational tenure (Mervis, 2009; Scribner & Cole, 1973). Therefore, although years of formal education is overall low, performance on tests related to baseline function, or crystallized intelligence, is generally high (Suchy-Dicey et al, 2022). Thus, psychometric evaluation of COWA, accounting for baseline function, comparing either direct measure of crystallized intelligence or its conventional proxy measure of educational tenure, is needed for valid score contextualization.…”

“…However, many minoritized populations, such as American Indians, have not been systematically included in psychometric evaluations of most standard tests, and when minority groups differ meaningfully from the majority in either diagnostic or normative standards, such oversights are likely to preclude clinicians and researchers from making valid diagnostic inference (Kiselica et al, 2021; Manly et al, 1998; Pedraza et al, 2012; Rivera Mindt et al, 2010). Given high risk of vascular and Alzheimer’s-related cognitive injury in American Indians (Mehta & Yeo, 2017; Suchy-Dicey et al, 2021; Suchy-Dicey, Howard, et al, 2022; Zhang et al, 2008), and clear disparities in cognitive test performance, compared with the majority population (Suchy-Dicey, Verney, et al, 2020; Suchy-Dicey et al, 2022; Verney et al, 2019), formal psychometric evaluation of cognitive tests is critically needed for this vulnerable population.…”