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Alter Dementia Summit Brings Together Faith Leaders, Brain Health Advocates

Brain Health Action joined the 2025 Alter Dementia Summit to promote brain health in African American churches through education, demos and faith leader panels

AARP

Nearly 500 people participated in the ALTER Dementia Summit April 10-12, 2025, to build awareness around brain health in African American and faith communities. The Brain Health Action (BHA) Collaborative was all in! This was the BHA Health and Prevention track’s first major event and Brain Health Action #4.

A speaker addresses participants at the 2025 Alter Dementia Summit

BHA advisors Fayron Epps from ALTER and Mitch Elkind from the American Heart Association (AHA) partnered with AARP to create and share a video on the importance of managing your blood pressure for your brain health and demonstrate how to take it correctly. Participants then practiced taking their blood pressure with one of the 400 cuffs sourced by ALTER with the AHA at an affordable price which was funded by the RRF Foundation for Aging.

Two women participants making signs at the AARP booth at the 2025 Alter Dementia Summit

AARP’s Kathy Washa highlighted Staying Sharp’s valuable brain health resources at our booth and showed how everyone could access this great digital information. Check out the below photos of attendees who stopped by the Brain Health Action booth to tell us what brain health actions they were going to take!

A collage of participants showing their posters of brain-healthy actions at the 2025 Alter Dementia Summit

BHA Advisory Council member Lisa Dedden Cooper from the National Council of Dementia Minds and her colleagues from the Black Dementia Minds group also attended to share what it’s like to live with dementia. Additionally, AARP’s Sarah Lenz Lock moderated a panel — “Power of the Pulpit” — with African American faith leaders. Shani Hosten represented AARP’s Music and Brain Health work at the Gospel Explosion concert. AARP conducted a panel discussion on the Six Pillars of Brain Health with Staying Sharp, and David Parkes and Sarah Lenz Lock led a focus group to collect feedback on our social media content plans for the upcoming Brain Health Action Campaign. Kudos to Collaborative member Fayron Epps and the ALTER team on this successful event! And to AARP’s Mary-Genevieve Moisan who organized BHA’s presence there.