Dementia is an umbrella term for a range of conditions associated with damage to the brain or brain cells (neurons). This means the brain cannot work as well as it should. Dementia can affect your ability to remember, think and speak. It also affects how you feel and behave.
People with dementia want to live normally in safe and accepting communities and the University’s Dementia Research and Innovation Centre brings together researchers, educationalists, and innovators who are interested in actively promoting personal independence, social integration and normalisation.
In this comment piece, Professor Jackie Parkes writes about why Dementia Action Week is something we should take notice of and why she is fully behind it…
This week (18-25 May 2026) marks Dementia Action Week which is organised by the Alzheimer’s Society to raise awareness and encourage action on dementia.
Obviously, the NDRIC team and I fully support this and I’ll update you in a few paragraphs about some of the great projects that endorse the awareness week, but I want to ask you a question.
The themes for the awareness week this year include improving dementia diagnosis rates – so, what would you do to improve this, or to help how we better support people who have dementia? If you need a starter for ten, please read on.
What is dementia?
Dementia – which included Alzheimer’s under that umbrella term – affects up to an estimated 982,000 people in the UK. This figure is expected to rise further to 1.4 million by 2040.
Over 9,000 people aged 65+ in Northamptonshire are thought to have a form a dementia and it can devastate those with these conditions, and their families, carers, friendship networks and their professional lives.
Although there is yet no cure, it’s not all doom and gloom. As we at NDRIC know, early diagnosis coupled with ‘brain training’ and other activities for people with dementia that can delay its progression, support for their carers and loved ones, and better awareness and understanding from members of the public and business and community leaders, means there is some light in the tunnel.
Knitting this together into something that is coherent and achievable for the many requires joined-up, strategic working – that can be the complicated bit! Which brings me back to my question – what you would you do to help with this, what would be on your ‘wish list’?
What is NDRIC and how is it helping?
NDRIC is based in University of Northampton’s (UON) Faculty of Health, Sport and Behavioural Sciences.
Underpinning NDRIC’s work is a commitment to ensuring the centrality of the voices of people with dementia, including those with a younger onset, and their loved ones and carers.
NDRIC has an extensive portfolio of research, evaluation, PhD research, community engagement, and public and patient involvement and engagement, all supporting this commitment.
One of the new engagement activities is the Dementia Forum that will be officially launched on Wednesday 15 July.
Dementia Forum has public and community engagement at its forefront. Working with partners such as Northamptonshire Carers, the Forum will build a network of people living with dementia and their family/carers, dementia champions and professionals, to discuss all things dementia.
The Forum will meet several times a year in person and online to codesign the six pillars of dementia set out in the latest Northamptonshire Dementia Strategy: Preventing well; Diagnosing well; Supporting well; Living well; Dying well and Leading well.
This approach, aligning smoothly with NDRIC’s objectives, should more than just answer the big question I posed above – we hope it will draw a line under it.
NDRIC also supports early career researchers, such as Claire Davies. Claire is turning her experience of caring for a loved one with dementia and her former career in financial services into academic research.
Her PhD explores the impact of transitioning to becoming a carer, which may involve those of working age; she plans to complete it in September 2027.
The big question… and finding an answer
So, back to the big question – with more people expected to have a form of dementia as the years roll by, how do we better support people who have dementia? What would be on your wish list?
If you need a little help with an answer, why not join me in Wednesday 15 July?
From 1.30pm-2.30pm at Waterside Campus, I will host a Dementia Training session for people to learn more about dementia and enable people to support others living with dementia. To sign up to this training, please email me directly.
Better still, help us propel these answers forward by also joining our first Dementia Forum when we launch it on Wednesday 15 July. A free to attend information event will be held from 9.30am-2pm in the Senate building at Waterside Campus. We look forward to seeing you.