How Academic Medical Centers Address Neurological Care: Kavita Nair, PhD, FAAN

As the prevalence of neurological diseases rises worldwide, academic centers have become the primary hubs for expert care and innovation, explains Kavita Nair, PhD, FAAN, professor of neurology and clinical pharmacy, University of Colorado Anschutz. However, their concentration of specialists and cutting-edge treatments also highlights ongoing barriers in accessibility and equitable delivery of neurological health care.

This transcript was lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What are some of the unique ways that academic systems are able to help deliver neurological care?

One aspect about academic centers is all these specialists [in] neurological care tend to be housed in academic centers, and so we tend to become the hub—and I'll come back to Alzheimer disease—where if someone is suspected of having symptoms or there might be a patient or a family member that's what we call a worried well—“I think my family member, my spouse, my parent...” The specialist, for the most part, in any kind of neurological disease, tends to be housed in academic centers. In that way, we're very uniquely positioned to take care of patients with neurodegenerative or neurological disease. On the flip side, because we as academic centers tend to house the specialties, we also may present a challenge, because not everyone can travel or can have easy access to academic centers, and as a result, this may result—and often this does result—in inequities. Who can get to an academic center? Who can drive you there? Who can make a 3-hour drive, especially as winter is approaching?

As a result of this, our wait times tend to be long. I come back to MS [multiple sclerosis] and Alzheimer disease. Our wait times can be several months long, and when you're talking about neurological disease, we have a saying: #TimeIsBrain. The longer you wait, the longer there are issues and trauma going on in the brain that only get worse, and you may age out, and you may start developing more trauma to the brain.

It's a little bit of a double-edged sword, but our responsibility as academic centers is to understand the science, understand the newest ways to provide diagnoses, and also to make sure that we can serve as many of our constituents, our populations, in ways that are not just direct care but also find innovative partnerships so that as many people in our region and in our state can be served.