WBHI joins national initiative to ensure women are considered in dementia research
by Lynn Posluns, Founder & President, Women's Brain Health Initiative:Women’s Brain Health Initiative (WBHI) is joining a national 5-year research program to enhance scientific understanding of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases, with particular emphasis on women. Announced earlier this fall by Health Minister Rona Ambrose, the consortium of Canada’s best and brightest neuro-scientists hopes to discover more effective brain-aging disease treatments and prevention strategies.Thanks to millions of dollars from the Canadian government and 13 partners from the public and private sectors, including WBHI, the Canada-wide initiative, Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA), brings together 20 research teams and 340 scientists and medical professionals to focus research on 3 topics:
- Delaying the onset of dementia and related illnesses
- Preventing illnesses from occurring
- Improving quality of life for Canadians living with these illnesses and their caregivers
Because of WBHI’s support, the CCNA now includes a Women and Dementia Core, a cross-cutting theme to ensure sex and gender are taken into account by the researchers involved across the 3 topics. This is important to better understand the unique risks for the two sexes, why differences exist, what the different outcomes are and whether they should be treated differently.According to the Alzheimer’s Society, 62% of Alzheimer’s sufferers today are women and if no solutions are found, this number will grow to 70%. We couldn’t ignore a number this big. Can you? Join our fight to combat brain aging diseases that affect women by donating or sharing your story, and prove our grey matter matters.