Nidhi Ghildayal, PhD, MPH

Nidhi Ghildayal holds a PhD in health decision science from the University of Minnesota. She completed her MPH in epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and her postdoctoral training at the Department of Population Health at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare. She has worked in a range of public of health spheres and with multiple longitudinal cohorts, and enjoys exploring new areas of research. 

Full Community Brief

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Impact of Factors on Incident Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in Asian and South Asian End-Stage Kidney Disease Patients

Nidhi Ghildayal, Carly Weaver, Jingyao Hong, Nancy Huang, Natalie Strohmayer, Dorry Segev, Mara McAdams-DeMarco

Department of Surgery, New York University Grossman School of Medicine and Langone Health, New York, NY, Department of Population Health, New York University Grossman School of Medicine and Langone Health, New York, NY

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to measure how structural racism factors experienced by Asian Americans with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) contribute to dementia/Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk in this patient population.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Structural racism refers to forms of unfair treatment embedded within existing laws, systems, or policies that are wide-ranging and that create barriers to opportunities to good health and well-being. Discrimination that results from structural racism (e.g., discrimination due to skin color, immigration status, low English proficiency) may influence differences in brain health and increase risk for dementia/AD in older Asian American patients with end-stage kidney disease.

KEY FINDINGS

• Research that helps to measure and quantify structural racism is helpful to the broader study of health disparities experienced by the older Asian American population.
• Identifying behavioral, social, and economic barriers of structural racism that elderly, individual minoritized populations face that cause health disparities in cognition and dementia/AD.
• Help us develop action items to address the modifiable social risk factors underlying structural racism.
• Ultimately, we hope it will inform interventions/policies to counter racism, which may likely also generalize to other aging minority populations and other populations with chronic diseases.

KEY TERMS/DEFINITIONS

ESKD (end-stage kidney disease) Dementia/AD (dementia/Alzheimer’s disease