Welcome to the seventh season of the Dementia Researcher X ISTAART PIA Relay Podcast. Across six episodes, leading early career and senior researchers hand the mic from one ISTAART PIA to the next, giving you an honest, peer-to-peer tour of where dementia research is actually heading, from wearables and biomarkers to policy and trial design, in the run-up to AAIC.

If we cured Alzheimer's tomorrow but did no work on cost, distribution or access, we would have cured it only for the richest people in the world. That line from Lillian Morgado sits at the centre of this episode. Lillian is a research coordinator at Georgia State University and Communications Chair of the ISTAART Health Policy PIA, working mainly in qualitative research and legal epidemiology. With host Dr Vanessa Young, she talks through what qualitative work actually involves, her research on caregivers and people with dementia in the justice system, and the question that opened up next: what happens to someone with no caregiver to advocate for them. They get into why AI and blood-based biomarkers are as much policy problems as scientific ones, how regulation differs across borders, and why policy is the bridge that decides whether science reaches the people it was meant for. Lillian also runs through the Health Policy PIA's busy week at AAIC, from PIA Day to a featured research session on dementia care across countries.

Takeaways

• Policy is the bridge from the lab to the patient; without it, a breakthrough only reaches the few who can already afford care.
• Qualitative interviews and coding surface the right questions before the big quantitative money goes in.
• Caregivers matter enormously when someone with dementia meets the justice system, which raises the question of those who have none.
• AI and blood-based biomarkers carry legal and access questions, and the rules differ between, say, the US and Europe under GDPR.
• You do not join a PIA because you already belong; you belong because you get involved, and you need not be an expert to contribute.

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The Alzheimer’s Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment (ISTAART) convenes the global Alzheimer’s and dementia science community. Members share knowledge, fuel collaboration and advance research to find more effective ways to detect, treat and prevent Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Professional Interest Areas (PIA) are an assembly of ISTAART members with common subspecialties or interests.

There are currently 30 PIAs covering a wide range of interests and fields, from Neuroimaging to Diversity and Disparities and everything in between.

Find out more at https://istaart.alz.org/

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