A Message from D-CAN Founder Dr. Zook
Our team at the Central Minnesota Dementia Resource Center Clinic (DRCC) welcomes you to this our first edition of our 501 ©3 nonprofit’s newsletter “More Life to Live”. Our incredible Board, clinic staff and volunteers will use this medium to regularly keep you up to date with what’s happening in our Central Minnesota Community with new dementia and dementia care developments – things useful to know if you or a loved one are experiencing symptoms of dementia, or if you would just like to keep up with some innovative best strategies to prevent it for yourself or family. Our mission is to “improve access to quality dementia care in our community”.
We have been working on this with input and help from over 70 area professionals and persons living with dementia who served on our Community Advisory Council starting in 2016. After several meetings and after focused strategic planning we settled on a center of excellence concept to tackle the numerous gaps in our community dementia care system brought to light with our study. We call this center the Dementia Resource Center Clinic (DRCC). Thanks to generous in-kind office space donations from CentraCare Health and City of St. Cloud (Whitney Senior Center), we opened our doors first at Whitney April 12, 2021, and then moved into the Midsota Center building September 2021 where we have seen clients there ever since.
We collaborate with referring physicians and other clinicians to diagnose and manage dementia, teach caregivers and families how best to minimize and deal with their loved one’s symptoms, run caregiver support groups, do outreach education to various groups, and do individual dementia risk assessments with amelioration planning for those without dementia who just want to delay or prevent getting dementia. We have spoken to clinician groups about our goal of incorporating our risk reduction model into their daily clinical practice. Our DRCC clients regularly call our office with questions whenever needed, working either with our clinician or dementia care navigators for questions, follow up information or situational advice.
We will have a few paper copies of this newsletter at the DRCC office, but most people will find it fastest via our website at DCAN-MN. org. This will be our way to keep our community, clients and caregivers up on the latest dementia and DRCC information and to announce our activities and events. Our office address is in the Midsota Center at 3701 12th St. North, Suite 103 St. Cloud, MN 56303.
Patrick Zook, MD, D-CAN President and Founder