LANSING, Mich. — If the fight against Alzheimer’s is going to change, it may start with people who simply care enough to act.
Tonight’s Good Neighbor is a Lansing man who saw what this disease does to families and decided he didn’t want to just stand by.
Zachariah Hernandez is about to graduate nursing school at Oakland University.
He’s already caring for patients at Sparrow Hospital as a patient care tech in the Neuro Trauma Unit. But Zachariah says the moment that changed him most didn’t happen in a classroom.
It happened while caring for patients living with Alzheimer’s.
“I worked at a nursing home for two years, and I would see on a daily basis the impact that Alzheimer's and brain disease had on patients and their families. I saw that it was a very big burden for the families to see their loved ones and know they do not recognize them anymore. I knew that we should be doing everything in our power that's possible to try to prevent this disease from happening to people in our communities.”
Zachariah says Alzheimer’s is one of the only chronic diseases still on the rise.
And the more he learned, the clearer something became. We are simply not talking about brain health nearly enough.
“One of the main obstacles of getting the awareness out about brain health is in our communities. We don't really talk about brain health and the different risk factors associated with it. And we know now that in your 30s, 40s, 50s, there's stuff you can do to lessen your risk of getting a brain health disease. We need to talk about it more so everyone's aware of it, and it's not taboo anymore.”
That passion eventually connected him with a national organization called UsAgainstAlzheimer’s.
Zachariah was selected from thousands of applicants across the country for its Brain Health Equity Nurse Fellowship.
The program trains nurses to help communities understand brain health and recognize the early warning signs of Alzheimer’s.
Daphne Delgado is the Vice President of Health Equity at UsAgainstAlzheimer’s.
“It's really meant to train frontline nurses to promote evidence-based brain health and support earlier awareness of Alzheimer's and related dementias. Nurses are usually the first health care professionals that many patients interact with, and they're critical partners in early detection education, but they don't necessarily get specialized training in brain health or Alzheimer's disease in their day-to-day education. So that was really one of the big gaps that we wanted to solve with this fellowship.”
The idea is simple.
Give trusted nurses the tools to talk about brain health before the disease takes hold... and send them back into the communities they care about most.
Zachariah says caring for patients in Lansing is personal for him.
“I care about my community," says Zachariah, and I'm from Lansing, so working at Sparrow means something to me, I feel like I'm actually helping out the community I come from. And working in healthcare, I care about any aspect I can do to help the health of our communities. I'm always going to take advantage of that and pursue it.”
Zachariah graduates from Oakland University with his nursing degree this coming May.
He completes the fellowship this summer.
Daphne says Zachariah and the other students in the fellowship program are already beginning the work to help educate their communities about Alzheimers.
“Zachariah is a good neighbor because he is actively caring about the health of the people in his community and trying to make a difference in his community.”
Because sometimes being a Good Neighbor means seeing a problem… and deciding your community deserves someone willing to do something about it.
And when it comes to the fight against Alzheimer’s… that change may start with people like Zachariah Hernandez.
So tonight we say thank you to Zachariah Hernandez… and to UsAgainstAlzheimer's, both Good Neighbors making a difference.
If you would like more information about USAgainstAlzheimers visit thier website at https://www.usagainstalzheimers.org/
