In 2012 it was estimated that in Northern Ireland 19,000 people live with dementia, less than 1000 of whom have early-onset dementia. In common with other parts of the developed world, as the local population ages, dementia is increasingly becoming a major public health and societal issue, with numbers of people with dementia projected to rise to around 60,000 by 2051. If it is considered that each of these people will have a network of lay and professional carers then it can be estimated that, by 2051, upwards of 500,000 people could be coping with the impact of dementia in their everyday lives in Northern Ireland.
HSC R&D Division in collaboration with The Atlantic Philanthropies (AP), issued a call for research to address the increasing prevalence of dementia in NI and the burden it places, and will place, on health and social care staff and resources, and on the quality of life and wellbeing of service users and their wider network of carers.
The development of this call followed from the launch of the NI Dementia Strategy, Improving Dementia Services in Northern Ireland, in 2011 and will complement and align with the work of the Dementia Strategy Implementation Group (DSIG), chaired by the Public Health Agency (PHA) and HSC Board (Commissioners of HSC Services) and charged with delivering the strategy’s accompanying action plan. The Strategy advocates the need for further research in dementia care through initiatives aimed at building inter-disciplinary and inter-professional research in health and or social care.
The priority areas for research which were developed in consultation with key stakeholders including service users, health professionals and commissioners utilized initial topics identified by national priority setting exercises in the UK led by the James Lind Alliance (part of the National Institute for Health Research, NIHR) and the Alzheimer’s Society to derive a locally agreed priority list of topics on which robust evidence is currently unavailable.
Seven Research Awards were made. This research is now complete and the finding from seven projects have been issued. Click on the image below to download a summary of the research findings.
Detail on each of the Awards made under the Commissioned Research Call in Dementia Care in 2013 & 2014 can be found below. This programme was jointly funded with the Atlantic Philanthropies. Figures refer to those at letter of award.
Professor S Martin (UU)