The European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) project launched in 2017 its EPAD Academy that is aiming to efficiently leverage EPAD resources to foster and develop academic research capacity and output in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) across Europe for maximum global impact.

On January 16, the EPAD Academy held its first activity that is to propose online training/webinars by world-class senior researchers on current topics in AD research for young researchers (EPAD Fellows). The first webinar, out of 14 scheduled for 2018, titled “The Dementia Concept after 2020: Research to change Practice, Public Perception and Politicians’ Perspectives” was held by EPAD co-coordinator, Prof Craig Ritchie.

“In this opening presentation – the fundamentals of EPAD are presented with specific reference to the driving societal, political and scientific factors. I hope EPAD fellows will become aware of the opportunities that will exist to them to help shape research policy, prevention and care in the near future”, commented Prof Craig Ritchie.

 

It has been discussed what is the utility of the current disease definitions – do they help or hinder scientific development, and what role does the public, science, the media, politicians and clinicians have in framing discussions and mapping out research direction and public policies on identification, risk management, funding and care. The EPAD Fellows took the opportunity to discuss about the broad context of EPAD in which their own work plays a fundamental part.

In order to promote young researchers´ involvement, the webinar was held exclusively for EPAD fellows. Nevertheless, the presentation has been recorded. If you are curious and interested to sit in on Craig’s webinar, the recording is available on the EPAD You Tube channel.