# Improving health equities for Hispanic/Latino families living with dementia by validating a Spanish-language Caregiver-Enabled Care Program (CECP) in PACE participants

> **NIH NIH R43** · CERESTI HEALTH, INC. · 2024 · $478,107

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Older Hispanic/Latino adults living with dementia face inadequate access to formal care and tend to rely
heavily or solely on family members for dementia care and assistance. Access to evidence-based resources
and support for family caregivers is critical to improving care and outcomes for a loved one living with
dementia. However, these resources and support are lacking for Hispanic/Latino caregivers. To address these
barriers to health equity in dementia care for the U.S. Hispanic/Latino population, Ceresti will develop an
approach for deploying its proven Caregiver-Enabled Care Program (CECP) to Spanish-speaking caregivers of
patients with dementia. CECP is a non-medical digital population health intervention that leverages data,
predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence to engage and support unpaid/informal caregivers. This is
accomplished via personalized education, proactive coaching, and remote monitoring, all delivered via a
dedicated tablet shipped to the caregiver's home at no cost to the caregiver or person with dementia. In a
previous clinical study of a 6-month version of CECP in a cohort of 164 English-speaking caregivers of persons
with dementia, caregivers sustained longitudinal engagement in their CECP (96.7% month-to-month continue
rate) and engaged in education, coaching and assessment for more than 40 min/week. After engaging at this
level, caregivers improved their mental health, reduced their loneliness, and were highly satisfied with their
CECP. For the proposed study, our central hypothesis is that Spanish-speaking caregivers will engaged at
levels that are comparable to those of English-speaking caregivers of dementia patients who have enrolled in
our English-language CECP. To test this hypothesis, we will enroll 135 Spanish-speaking caregivers of
dementia patients participating in a Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) into a 6-month study
of our Spanish-language CECP. At the end of this study, we expect to show that caregivers who enrolled in our
Spanish CECP sustained comparable longitudinal and weekly engagement as English-speaking caregivers.
These outcomes are important because sustained longitudinal and high-intensity engagement is a core pillar to
effective population health; in this case, more engagement increases caregiver knowledge, skills, and
confidence in caring for a loved one with dementia. Successful implementation of our Spanish-language CECP
will be an important contribution towards achieving health equity for Spanish-speaking families living with
dementia. Our findings will show that the highly scalable approach of using AI-plus-human validation to
develop a Spanish-language CECP can deliver equivalent engagement to our proven English-language CECP.
This crucial demonstration of the feasibility of our approach will position us favorably for future studies aimed to
show the efficacy, scalability, and commercialization potential of our Spanish language CECP and our poten...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10923735
- **Project number:** 1R43AG088143-01
- **Recipient organization:** CERESTI HEALTH, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Dirk Soenksen
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $478,107
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-07-15 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10923735

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10923735, Improving health equities for Hispanic/Latino families living with dementia by validating a Spanish-language Caregiver-Enabled Care Program (CECP) in PACE participants (1R43AG088143-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10923735. Licensed CC0.

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