The Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Care at UCLA (Easton Center) is committed to equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, in our research, care, and support of people, families, and communities living with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Alzheimer’s disease affects our growing aging population, projected to increase exponentially to 13 million in the US by 2050. The Easton Center is fully committed to serving all people, their families, and communities impacted by this disease.

The Easton Center is dedicated to creating an equitable and inclusive environment and fosters a place of belonging for our patients, their families, as well as our staff, faculty, and students. We strive to be a center of excellence that promotes inclusive education, science, and clinical practice. A diverse faculty and staff will foster innovation and creativity, and ensure diversity in our engagement, education, research, and clinical care. Inclusion of all ideas and hypotheses will allow the center to excel in the broad scope of research avenues to explore, including novel forms of treatment and care.

As part of UCLA, we also focus on health equity, diversity, and inclusion and acknowledge the structural determinants of health and social inequities, and the impact they have on brain health, Alzheimer’s dementia risk, prevalence, and longevity post-diagnosis. We know that the majority of Alzheimer’s research has solely focused on individuals of European ancestry or who identify as white. We strive to center communities of color, gender expansive communities, and people of all ethnicities and cultural backgrounds in the research conducted at our center to gain a better understanding of this disease. Through focused and diverse research, we can change the course of this disease in populations or communities relegated to the margins, and therefore we will change the course of the disease in all populations.