As we head into April of 2021, this marks the end of our fifth year of the Dementia Awareness Program. Since October 2016, our group of dedicated high school students and alumni from Havergal College in Toronto, Canada have worked to raise awareness of dementia among the student body through connecting student volunteers with seniors with dementia weekly at a local seniors’ residence. In addition, our group has created and maintained this awareness blog with the goal of reaching the wider community. Our readership has expanded to over 3,000 globally.
Despite the many changes and challenges to our lives this past year due to COVID-19, our group has continued to champion our blog’s mission to educate the community and de-stigmatize dementia. Our two student leaders, Zoë and Selina, have worked hard to put together this year’s monthly blog series – featuring the voices of dementia healthcare professionals, caregivers, and patients. We would like to express our appreciation and gratitude to Erika Friesen, Dr. Patrick Chu, Catherine Molnar Livingstone, Allan S. Vann, and Wendy Mitchell for sharing their insights on dementia on our blog. Our guests have shared their wisdom on what it is like to work with individuals with dementia or live with early-onset dementia themselves, what they wish others knew about dementia, advice for family caregivers, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted them. We could not have put together such a successful and meaningful blog series without all of their help.
To our readers, we hope that you have enjoyed reading this blog series and learning from the experiences and perspectives of the featured healthcare professionals, family caregivers, and patients with dementia. If you have feedback or ideas of what blog series we should do next year, please do not hesitate to leave us a comment on this post.
If you are interested in learning more about dementia, please feel free to read through our previous blog posts from past years as well.
· 2019-20 monthly series: community support and resources available for dementia patients and caregivers, with a focus on Canada’s first National Dementia Strategy published in 2019
· 2018-19 monthly series: featured new dementia research and leading female experts in this field
· 2017-18 weekly series: current research developments in dementia and “Ask the Expert” questions answered by Professor Nathan Herrmann
· 2016-17 weekly series: foundations of what dementia is, its prevalence, causes, early warning signs, treatment, prevention, and more
Last but not least, we would like to sincerely thank Professor Nathan Herrmann for his continued support and guidance over the program and this blog for the past five years. Most notably, we would like to thank him for generously sharing his time and expertise to mentor our former student leaders with dementia advocacy and equip them and us with the skills to go on and train new students to lead the Dementia Awareness Program – as this program’s legacy continues on at Havergal College even after former student leaders graduate. This blog would not have been successful without the mentorship of Dr. Herrmann. For more information on dementia, you can also follow Dr. Herrmann’s “Memory Doctor” blog for dementia caregivers and read his most recent post titled, “Caring for a person with dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic”, at: http://health.sunnybrook.ca/memory-doctor/
On behalf of the Havergal College student and alumni leaders of this program, thank you for your continued support and engagement with the Dementia Awareness Program!
Professor Nathan Herrmann and Student Executive Team
Chair Selina Chow
Vice-Chair Zoë Stevens
Nathan Herrmann MD FRCPC
Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Head, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
