Digital Signatures of ADRD Risk among Hispanics/Latinos in the United States

Hispanic/Latino adults in the U.S. experience disproportionate risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), in part due to elevated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. This SALUD-Tech study examined whether passive smartphone-derived GPS mobility metrics may serve as scalable digital indicators of ADRD and CVD risk among middle-aged and older Hispanic/Latino adults.

Participants were 240 adults aged 50–70 from the San Diego region. Cognitive status was determined using traditional neuropsychological testing; 123 participants met criteria for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 159 met criteria for elevated CVD risk based on the presence of two or more cardiovascular risk factors. Participants completed a 30-day digital data collection protocol including smartphone GPS, Fitbit activity and sleep data, screentime screenshots, and keypress data; this poster focuses on GPS-derived mobility metrics.

GPS mobility outcomes included average daily distance, life-space, time out of home, day-to-day change in daily distance, and day-to-day change in life-space. Reduced life-space was associated with MCI status and appeared to decrease with greater cognitive domain burden, suggesting that mobility range may reflect early functional changes related to cognitive risk. Elevated CVD risk was associated with lower average daily distance and lower day-to-day distance variability, indicating a more restricted mobility pattern among adults with greater vascular risk. Among individual CVD risk factors, obesity showed the strongest and most consistent association with reduced mobility.

These findings suggest that passive smartphone-based GPS measures may offer a scalable, low-burden approach for identifying mobility-related behavioral signatures of cognitive and vascular risk in Hispanic/Latino populations. Ongoing work is examining whether combinations of passive smartphone and wearable metrics can improve identification of ADRD risk.