Help prevent people with dementia from being abandoned

Last week’s headline in the Times “Dementia sufferers abandoned by hospitals” and other headlines like this are making us all scared of getting older and with good reason. Even if we don’t mind what the aging process will do to our bodies, we know that what it will do to our minds can be far worse. We could lose control of our most basic understanding of the world, who we are and how we fit into it.

The Alzheimer’s Society predicts that there will be 1 million people with dementia in the UK by 2025. And it has been estimated that there are currently 44 million dementia suffers worldwide.

This month we are featuring an initiative from University College London, an online learning course called “The Many Faces of Dementia”. This course is open to anyone interested in learning more about Dementia. It was created to help everyone in society understand some of the key issues around dementia and to look at how research into the signs, stages, symptoms and causes of less common forms can bring us closer to the aim of defeating dementia.

Dementia is an umbrella term for a number of diseases that all cause a progressive loss of our ability to think, feel and perceive by affecting how the brain functions. The course investigates four forms of dementia that are important to understand and that provide insight to change how we think about dementia in general. It looks at some of the ground-breaking research taking place and spends time with people suffering from the condition.

Contribute your marketing expertise
Tim Shakespeare, Course Director for “The Many Faces of Dementia”, said: “we are trying to change perceptions about dementia, bringing about improvements in the experience that people with dementia have in the community and in healthcare settings.

“We have created a fantastic online course to do this and we need help to spread the word about it as widely as possible.”

The first run of the course attracted just over 8,000 learners and received overwhelmingly positive comments from participants. The next run of the course will be starting in July and there is a third run scheduled for October.

If you are interested in helping UCL develop their marketing strategy for engaging participants in “The Many Faces of Dementia” course please get in touch with Anna Mullenneaux, Chief Match Maker at Pimp My Cause at [email protected].