Digital Pharma: UK’s online dementia mentors
pharmafile | October 26, 2010 | News story | Medical Communications | Alzheimer's disease, Comprehensive Spending Review, Digital Pharma blog, dementia, patient education
The Department of Health is looking for hundreds of people to become online dementia mentors as part of it ongoing efforts to raise awareness of the condition.
It plans to build the biggest dementia mentoring network in the country and to do this has teamed up with Horsesmouth, which positions itself as ‘where social networking meets social enterprise’.
The DH hopes it will be a valuable resource allowing anyone with experiences of the condition – from sufferers and family members to healthcare professionals – to anonymously share experiences and advice.
Mentoring website Horsesmouth uses a moderated platform to offer secure, private one-to-one dialogue via its hosted email network, with the opportunity for members to choose to publish ‘pearls of wisdom’ for the wider community to see.
The initiative ties in with the first National Dementia Strategy – Living Well with Dementia, which launched last year and was today boosted by the unveiling of a National Dementia Declaration.
This charter has the support of 45 organisations from the charity, public and private sectors and sets out what each of them plans to do to improve the quality of life for people with dementia in England.
Paul Burstow, Care Services Minister, said: “Dementia is more than a health issue, it’s one of the defining social challenges of our time. We have to prepare ourselves now for the impact this will have on our society as our population ages.
“This Dementia Declaration shows tremendous commitment from across health and care services and the voluntary sector, to transform services and tackle stigma to make a difference for people with dementia and their families. Willingness to join forces to act should spur more organisations to join this movement for change.”
Dementia was singled out in last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review as an area of health where the government promised to prioritise treatment.
Alzheimer’s Society TV dementia commercial
The DH has also recently joined forces with the Alzheimer’s Society to raise awareness of dementia through a television advertising campaign.
Under the tagline I have dementia, I also have a life, the two adverts outline how the condition affects sufferers and what people can do to help them and understand the condition.
Some 750,000 people have a form of dementia, more than half of them with Alzheimer’s disease, and the numbers are steadily rising. In 15 years a million people will be living with dementia and this figure is expected to hit 1.7 million by 2051.
Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
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