by Scientia Professor Kaarin Anstey, CEPAR Co-Deputy Director, ARC Laureate Fellow, and Scientia Professor of Psychology, UNSW Sydney
As we move into Dementia Awareness week, which is from 20-26th September, it is timely to reflect on the knowledge that approximately 450,000 Australians are living with dementia, and a greater number of us are involved in caring for someone with dementia. This year we were pleased to see that dementia was included in the national Census, and that will help us improve the estimates of its prevalence as Australia has never had a national prevalence study of dementia.
CEPAR researchers are working on several projects relevant to cognitive decline in normal ageing and dementia in Australia that focus both on population level modelling as well as understanding the impacts of cognitive changes on daily lives as people age. Researchers are examining how to use administrative data to gain insights into the scale of dementia in our community and how it is distributed across the country. CEPAR teams from the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) are collaborating on developing estimates of dementia mortality and projections of dementia prevalence in under-represented and diverse groups, including migrants and Aboriginal Australians. At UNSW we are leading research on understanding cognitive decline in normal ageing and how that changes alongside other health and social changes and impacts every-day activities. Researchers in our Decision Making, Expectations and Cognitive Ageing research stream have recently completed the 20-year follow up of the PATH Through Life Study. Nearly 1,000 participants aged in their early 80s were interviewed by phone about their social and psychological wellbeing, their housing, and changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many others globally, we had to change our research design to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than in-person interviews conducted in the home of participants, our full interview was conducted by phone. We have also used this opportunity to collect data on how lockdowns are impacting older Australians’ social and psychological wellbeing.
Finally, I am delighted that our CEPAR Research Fellow Dr Craig Sinclair has recently received funding as part of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Targeted Call for Research in End of Life Care. This will allow Craig to move into an independent research role in 2022. Craig has been a wonderful collaborator on our Decision Making, Expectations and Cognitive Ageing research stream, contributing expertise in the development of new assessments of late-life financial and health decision-making. We look forward to continuing collaboration with Craig in the next exciting stage of his career.
Kaarin Anstey is a CEPAR Co-Deputy Director, an ARC Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor at UNSW Sydney, and a Senior Principal Research Scientist at NeuRA. She is Director of the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute, leads an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Cognitive Health, is a director of the NHMRC Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration.