Exploring the potential for community pharmacists to support timely help seeking for dementia among the Black African and Caribbean population

This research is drawn from findings that, while Black African and Caribbean people have a higher chance of developing vascular dementia, they are often diagnosed at advanced stages of dementia because they present later to dementia care facilities. This poses significant concerns due to implications for poorer treatment outcomes and higher treatment cost. Interventions to support timely help seeking for dementia have been designed for BAME communities and implemented through diverse healthcare facilities but the challenge of late dementia help seeking persists among the Black African and Caribbean population specifically. Community pharmacies are healthcare facilities conveniently located within the community, thus the potential for timely dementia help seeking support to be provided to the Black African and Caribbean population through this health facility is explored in this research study. A four-stage multi-method investigation was conducted. Starting with a scoping review which explored the range of existing dementia help seeking interventions designed for the BAME population, the research continued with two surveys. One survey provided initial insight into the dementia help seeking behaviour of the Black African and Caribbean people and the other examined the initial disposition of community pharmacists towards providing dementia help seeking support to the target population. The last stage was a qualitative interview study which built on the survey findings to explore the potentials for community pharmacists to offer the needed support. While personal and systemic difficulties experienced on the help seeking journey of the Black African and Caribbean people contributed to their delayed help seeking for dementia, the community pharmacists were willing and believed they were suitably positioned to provide initial as well as ongoing dementia help seeking support to this population. Possible interventions were grouped into community pharmacy-based individual public health engagements, media engagement and wider community engagement, although the community pharmacists envisaged among other factors, a lack of adequate funding as a probable barrier to the implementation of these interventions.