Mount Vernon Presbyterian, Emory experts team up for Healthy Aging event

Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church has teamed up with the Emory Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center to present a Healthy Aging event that offers community memory screenings.

The Live Well, Age Well Healthy Aging event will be held on Sunday, Aug. 25, from 1:30-4:30 p.m. at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church at 471 Mt. Vernon Hwy. NE in Sandy Springs.

Four neurology experts from Emory University’s Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center will discuss healthy aging in a panel presentation. The event will help attendees understand dementia. Free memory screenings will be given and healthy aging resources will be available.

The confidential memory screening is not a memory evaluation, but instead is a helpful test, organizers said. Attendees will be given a series of questions and tasks (paper & pen assessment only) designed to screen for memory, language skills, and thinking abilities. The results will be given at the end of the screening. If the screening reveals memory concerns, testing results will be given and next steps will be discussed.

Dee Bradford-Smith, an elder on the Seniors Ministry Team, said the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church has been a community church for 70 years. Church members started Los Ninos Primeros, and helped found the Community Action Center and Mount Vernon School.

The elders had talked about having an educational, health-centered outreach. Seniors at the church approached them about putting something together for the community. And she has attended the Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s conferences for 20 years out of interest for her mother and herself. The result was the Healthy Aging event.

Attendees will get a chance to hear physicians who practice Cognitive Neurology.

“Cognitive Neurology is something that has a lot of patients and not a lot a lot of practitioners, as the baby boomers have hit,” Bradford-Smith said.

Two different resources rooms will be filled with people whose organizations service seniors, function and focus on seniors, such as the AARP Alzheimer’s Foundation, and other members of the Atlanta Senior Care Network, she said. It’s an organization that has more than 400 members who help seniors with many different services. At least a dozen businesses that offer services to seniors will be on hand for attendees to learn about what they can offer.

Visit mtvernonhealthyaging.eventbrite.com to register or for more information, or call Emilie Bush at (678) 841-4016. Additional information is available at the Goizueta Emory Alzheimer’s Disease Center website by visiting www.alzheimers.emory.edu .

The post Mount Vernon Presbyterian, Emory experts team up for Healthy Aging event appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta .