Welcome Back from Professor Nathan Herrmann and Student Executive Team

Since September 2016, a group of students from Havergal College in Toronto, Canada have established and grown the Dementia Awareness Program in partnership with Professor Nathan Herrmann. Professor Herrmann is the Richard Lewar Chair in Geriatric Psychiatry at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University of Toronto. At Sunnybrook, he is Head of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry, co-director of the Clinical Neuropharmacology Laboratory, and a scientist in the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Research Program and the Center for Stroke Recovery. With over 530 publications and 130 research grants, Dr. Herrmann is a world leading expert on dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Under the mentorship of Professor Herrmann, we established the Dementia Awareness Program in 2016. The purpose of our program to raise awareness of and reduce the stigma surrounding dementia both within and beyond our community, while also providing the opportunity for high school students to volunteer weekly with individuals with dementia.

We have used our blog these past two years as an avenue to share our experience working with people with dementia, as well as sharing the knowledge we have learned about dementia as we stay up to date with current research in the field. Since the inception of our blog in 2016, we are proud to say that we have increased awareness of dementia worldwide – with over 3,000 visits from readers across the world.

We are thrilled to be gearing up for the third year of the Dementia Awareness Program by continuing both our blog here and the community partnership between Havergal College students and a local seniors’ residence. This year, our monthly blog series will feature exciting new research developments regarding dementia, as well as local female dementia experts and researchers who are world-renowned for their work.

We sincerely hope that this will be of interest to you and the community. Together, we can learn more about this important cause and the ground-breaking research in this field.

You can also follow Professor Herrmann’s “Memory Doctor” blog for dementia caregivers at: http://health.sunnybrook.ca/memory-doctor/

Professor Nathan Herrmann and Student Executive Team

Chair                Selina Chow

Vice-Chair        Clarissa Yu

Vice-Chair        Olivia Nadalini

Nathan Herrmann MD FRCPC

Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

Lewar Chair, Geriatric Psychiatry

Head, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre