Researchers at Rutgers-Newark are sounding the alarm after they found a shockingly high number of people in the Newark area suffering from memory decline and symptoms of dementia.

The researchers have been screening Black seniors living in public and federally subsidized housing in Newark and nearby communities since the start of this year. Over the course of six months, the Rutgers team screened 160 people and found roughly two-thirds of them had more severe memory decline than usual for their age, with nearly half of those people showing signs of dementia.

“This is in many ways a three-alarm dementia crisis,” said Mark Gluck, director of the Aging & Brain Health Alliance at Rutgers-Newark.

The seniors that showed serious cognitive decline were frequently isolated, without family or friends nearby to support them or spot early warning signs. And they lacked the resources to get help.

The screening initiative is part of the  Pathways to Healthy Aging in African Americans program run by Gluck’s alliance, and is part of a larger effort to understand and address brain health challenges in the Black community. Researchers did not make any conclusions about specific demographics, but the program studies populations and an area of New Jersey where Alzheimer’s disease is known to be of particular concern.

“This is the first time where we've essentially taken the research out into the community,” Gluck said. “Our goal was to reach the most vulnerable people.”

The screening is ongoing, and has reached residents in Newark and surrounding cities, including East Orange and Irvington. Black people make up 45% of Newark’s population, and 40% of Essex County’s.

Roughly 185,000 New Jerseyans over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s disease, which is the most common cause of dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. That’s a 12.3% prevalence rate — the sixth highest of all states. And Essex County, home to Newark and its suburbs, ranks 10th of all counties in the nation with a prevalence of 15%.

Black Americans are twice as likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s as the rest of the population. And about half of people living with dementia have not been formally diagnosed, according to Doris Phildor, health systems director for the Alzheimer’s Association.

Phildor praised the Rutgers effort as an example of the kind of field work needed to reach dementia patients.

“There's actually a lot of work nationwide to take screening outside of the walls of a provider because we know that everybody doesn't necessarily go to providers,” Phildor said. “They don't necessarily have a trusted [primary care provider] to address these concerns.”

The screenings that the Rutgers team is doing take just 15 minutes, but can be critical to catching mental decline early and giving people a chance to deal with the problem.

“ It's like a domino. Once you open this door, you start thinking about what else is gonna be needed in order to make sure that this person has a good quality of life and can function, and there's a lot of support that will be needed to make sure that that happens,” Phildor said. “And we know that the access to those resources is limited.”

The screenings have turned up people with signs of mental decline more severe than expected.

“We thought we were gonna be mostly catching people early, and we still are,” Gluck said. “But we were also shocked to find how many people have really moderate or even advanced dementia.”

The residents screened are frequently living alone, without family or friends nearby, according to the researchers There are few people, if anyone, to notice signs of trouble and intervene to help.

“They literally dement in place,” Gluck said. “They develop dementia alone in place until it's really just the housing authority that has to deal with it when they're no longer able to live alone.”

The screening results suggest there’s a greater need for dementia care in New Jersey, at least among the state’s low-income Black residents. Gluck said recent improvements have been made — Newark is no longer a dementia care desert since the Center for Memory and Brain Health opened at University Hospital — and his team is able to refer patients to Newark Beth Israel and Hackensack Meridian Health clinics as well. But there is still a backlog for care in the state.

“A lot of dementia care is just very labor-intensive and not highly reimbursed,” Gluck said. “So that's been why all these hospital systems in the past have been reluctant to build out dementia care even though it's needed.”

The New Jersey Department of Health, through the Division of Aging Services, subsidizes adult day care programs for low-income people with Alzheimer’s or other dementia. The department did not respond to a request for comment.