Dementia Support Line
Research evidence support
At Alzheimer's Society, we use research evidence to inform decision-making and enable better health, care and wellbeing for people affected by dementia.
We recognise how important it is that useful and useable dementia research findings are shared. They inform decision making to enable better health, care and wellbeing for people affected by dementia.
However, we know that this translation of findings is not always easy and linear.
Only 7 per cent of research is taken into day-to-day clinical practice - and that can take up to 17 years.
How our Research Evidence team can help you
The Research Evidence team at Alzheimer's Society aims to close this gap and ensure all our decisions are based on the best available evidence to enable the outcomes that people affected by dementia tell us they want.
The team enables the use of academic dementia care research evidence to inform decision making. This evidence is used alongside the experiences of people affected by dementia and the skills and knowledge from staff and subject/topic experts to guide our work.
We work hard to bridge the gap between dementia care research and practice.
The Research Evidence team supports researchers to mobilise outputs from dementia care research that are ready for implementation. This will enable Alzheimer's Society to use evidence to inform decisions or practice in a clinical or policy setting.
We act as knowledge brokers between dementia care researchers and people who could benefit from the findings. For example, part of this work involves supporting the synthesis of academic evidence to our Policy and Campaigns teams, Public Affairs colleagues, national services, as well as Training and Consultancy.
We also work with the dementia care researcher community to explore the next steps for products emerging from research that have shown benefits of improving health and wellbeing.
Case study example
My Life, My Goals is a recent example of a product from a dementia care research project that enables people living with dementia to set goals resulting in improvements in daily living, maintaining independence and sparking hope. Alzheimer's Society has adopted this resource to help support people living in the early stages of dementia.
Please contact us if you are a researcher and have an innovation or product emerging from research that you would like advice on how to implement.
Our key areas of interest
We are particularly interested in supporting research and changes to policy and practice in these areas:
- Diagnosis
- Post diagnostic support
- Maintaining independence at home
- Research in care homes and hospitals
- End of life care
Work with us
Help to maximise the impact of dementia research. Our Research Evidence team can support the translatability of ongoing research and share information about our new Research Outputs process for research. (Please note, our expert team has limited capacity and therefore may need to prioritise the support that we are able to offer.)
