Dr. Susan Flowers Benton Was the Keynote Speaker at WI ADRC Solomon Carter Fuller Day Luncheon: Passing on the Impact
Dr. Susan Flowers Benton (l) with her husband Robert Benton
by Jonathan Gramling
When Dr. Susan Flowers Benton came to UW-Madison in the 2010s to earn her Ph.D., she didn’t have research in mind as a career. But in doing some research with Dr. Carey Gleason who leads the WI Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s Inclusion of Underrepresented Groups initiative, Benton was won over to the research side. And in her role at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Benton is helping to bring forward a new generation of African American researchers, some of whom may carry on in the Alzheimer’s disease and dementia research effort, particularly in the African American community.
Benton’s approach to research was melded in Madison by the people she worked with.
“I really take from each of the people who mentored me like Dr. Gleason, Dr. Zuelsdorff and Dr. Carter,” Benton said. “I have really taken pieces of their thoughts and added them to my philosophy. Dr. Gleason was always pushing me. I had a joke that sometimes it felt like she was pushing me off a cliff. But her philosophy was always push and support. With Dr. Carter, it take from her the center is people’s dignity and humanity and the insistence on the respect. I try to pass that on to my students. Dr. Zuelsdorff showed the collaboration, sharing the resources and celebrating each other’s wins. I absolutely take what I have gained in Madison, everything that I have learned and all the training that I received and I am using it with my students now.”
One of the most important lessons that Benton learned is the effectiveness of community-based research, research of, by and for the community.
“I think you come up with so much better outcomes when you recognize people’s humanity, when you recognize that this isn’t just a series of questions for this person or doing science for science’s sake,” Benton said. “This is really important. And the reasons why people participate in the research is so meaningful. They are coming because they have watched loved ones struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. Or they are afraid that they
may have Alzheimer’s disease or they want to help. Since they’ve seen the struggle, they want to help to try to figure out how to prevent it, how to end it for people. When people are coming with that kind of meaning behind what they are doing, you have to also match that as a researcher. You just have to really care, especially because when we are talking about health disparities, it’s really about justice. It’s really about making sure that people have the same access to the treatment, same access to the healthcare infrastructure and everything that goes along with that. The work is just so important.”
With community-based research, it is the close proximity to the community — on some levels becoming a member of the community — that allows it to happen in the African American community that historically has been negatively impacted by white researchers.
“Building a relationship in research is one of the things that we were trying to test because if you get the opportunity as a researcher to participate in different community activities without the ask — you’re just here,” Benton said. “What researchers have to do is put themselves out there. I have to go out. I have to be part of this community. I have to let people get to know me so that they can see what my philosophy is, what I am about, do my actions match my words. And then they can make their decisions. And so what we do find is that community engagement does increase people’s comfort levels with participating in more intense levels of research. And so you start off with qualitative work, giving a survey, asking a survey. But as you get to know people, people start talking about, ‘Maybe I will donate my brain’ because they trust you now. You have become part of the community. And they know that you will respect their contribution.”
With community-based research, it begins and ends in the community.
“When you’re doing community-engaged research, one of the tenets is to go back to the community to tell them what you’ve found and how you are going to implement your findings,” Benton said. “With Dr. Gleason’s work in the community, they are always having these opportunities to tell people whatever the impacts were. It kind of makes this very nice circle where you start with the community, but then you also end with it. Instead of just kind of disappearing and kind of extracting from the community and coming back 10-15 years later and it’s in someone’s journal, community-engaged research makes you come back to the community. You have to translate it as well because it can’t be in research jargon and all of the ways that we talk with each other as academics. You have to be able to put it into words so that you can communicate it to an audience where that is not the language that they speak. It forces you to explain what are the practical impacts of what you have done. How can this be usable, what I have found and how we should use it going to forward.”
While a cure for Alzheimer’s disease has not yet been discovered — Benton feels they are very close to finding one — there are things that people can implement in their own lives that delay or lessens the impact of Alzheimer’s disease.
“I think maintaining your physical health is important, making sure you’re getting enough rest, eating right, getting physical activity and sleeping well,” Benton said. “And then it’s important to maintain your mental health, addressing any mood issues, any things that are going on mentally. And then also maintaining your social health, making sure you remain connected to the community. As people get older, there is a tendency to become more isolated and making sure that you are still getting out there, you’re still interacting with people, you’re still embedded in the community is really important in trying to delay or prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Social health is something that people don’t really think about. You see a lot of decline just in health period, not even talking about Alzheimer’s disease, but other types of conditions as well, when people get older, people who remain socially connected tend to have better outcomes than people who are isolated, people who are alone. They tend to decline more quickly.”
However, the work is hardly completed.
“Keep on participating in research,” Benton urged people. “Keep on keeping researchers accountable. Just keep engaging in the way that they have with Black Leaders for Brain Health and all of the ways that people can help set the direction of research. This health equity work is meaningful work. It’s important work. And it has to continue.”
Community-based health efforts and research must continue for the health of the community.
