Millions of Americans and their caregivers are living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias now, and that number will continue to grow. In addition to seeking effective treatments, we must further develop the evidence base about what works to improve care, services, and supports. We need your ideas and questions to set the agenda for this high-priority area of research.
If you’re interested in being part of the solution, you can help shape the discussion at the upcoming Second National Research Summit on Care, Services, and Supports for Persons with Dementia and Their Caregivers. While the Summit isn’t until next year (March 24-25, to be exact), we need to hear from you by June 28 to help craft the conversation around future caregiving research priorities!
A bit of background
The 2020 Summit follows the groundbreaking first National Research Summit on Care, Services, and Supports for Persons with Dementia and Their Caregivers (also known as the Dementia Care & Caregiving Summit), held in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in October 2017. The 2017 Dementia Care & Caregiving Summit Report summarizes this Summit and the numerous research recommendations it generated. Several of these recommendations were directed at NIA, and we have been working since 2017 to implement them. The 2020 Dementia Care & Caregiving Summit aims to expand on what was learned from the previous summit and spark new and innovative ideas.
We want to hear from YOU!
We are early in the planning process for the 2020 Summit, and we’re eager to receive input from all stakeholders about topics of interest. We’ve even issued a Request for Information to solicit your ideas.
And when we say all stakeholders, we mean all. We’d like to hear from people living with dementia, caregivers, scientists, academic institutions, the private sector, health professionals, professional societies, advocacy groups, communities, and other interested members of the public. If you’d like to see a specific topic considered, please email us or you can react to the primary goals that have been outlined for the meeting, which include:
- Sharing findings from dementia caregiving and dementia care intervention research
- Sharing research findings on the improved characterization of persons with dementia, caregivers, and health and social service systems
- Conveying progress made since the 2017 Dementia Care Summit
- Providing opportunities for stakeholders to discuss dementia care and caregiving research needs and the experience of seeking care
- Addressing participation of persons with dementia and caregivers in research
- Addressing how scientists can improve intervention research
- Addressing the experience of dementia across and between care settings
- Highlighting critical future scientific areas of inquiry, including infrastructure and data needs
Whether the disease has personally touched you or your family, you are a researcher in this field, or you are newly interested in this topic, we value your ideas.
