In this podcast Hannah Churchill, Research Communications Officer for Alzheimer’s Society takes the chair to talk with three Alzheimer’s Society funded researchers to discuss how they adapted in response to the pandemic.

People with dementia have been worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic – with over a quarter of people who died of COVID-19 between March and June 2020 having had dementia.

Many dementia researchers have refocussed their work to study how the virus has impacted people living with dementia and their carers, to discover the likely long-term effects and to understand how care and support can be better provided in the future – ensuring lessons are learnt.

Basic scientists turned their attention to COVID-19 testing, or took the time to learn new coding skills, write papers and to play the next stages of the research. While clinical researchers mostly returned to be entirely focussed on front line care within the NHS.

The show is pleased to welcome:

Dr Nuriye Kupeli, Senior Research Fellow from University College London. Nuriye, is works on understanding how compassion is experienced by family carers and developing interventions to support carers in their role.

Dr Claire Pentecost, IDEAL Programme Manager from University of Exeter. IDEAL is the largest study of living well with dementia in the UK. The evidence will enable the development of new policy, interventions and initiatives to transform the lives of people with dementia and their carers.

Remco Tuijt, PhD Student, University College London. Remco, is researching Post-diagnostic dementia care using interviews to explore healthcare experiences for people with dementia, their carers and their healthcare professionals.

You can find out more about our panellists, and their work on our website:

www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk

A transcript of this podcast is also available here

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/podcast-alzheimers-society-keeping-research-going-during-a-pandemic/

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The Alzheimer’s Society “Worst hit: Dementia during coronavirus” report can be found here:

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-09/Worst-hit-Dementia-during-coronavirus-report.pdf

Information on Alzheimer’s Society research grants can be found here:

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/research/researchers/grants

For information on the IDEAL Study visit:

http://www.idealproject.org.uk/

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This podcast is brought to you in association with Alzheimer's Research UK and Alzheimer's Society, who we thank for their ongoing support.