Finalist
Building an Evidence Base for the Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s
Summary of work
People with Alzheimer’s disease across Europe are today often diagnosed too late, or not at all.
Policy change at the national and European levels is essential to rectify this. However, it is difficult to win the argument for early diagnosis when there are no effective disease-modifying treatments licensed: why should patients want it, or taxpayers fund it?
In order to encourage health services to plan ahead for the day when this changes, MSD set out to create an evidence base of public attitudes to the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease across Europe using public polling.
The project showed broad public support for early diagnosis and triggered wide-ranging debate across Europe. A wide range of stakeholders were engaged at multiple events, including: co-chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia; MEPs; representatives of the EU Parliament and Commission; the Chair of Alzheimer Switzerland and Alzheimer’s Society UK; and multiple other national charities.
The project fed directly into the process of updating the Government’s Dementia 2020 strategy and created ongoing partnership opportunities, including charities and parliamentarians working in partnership to undertake follow-up research, specific to the UK, to be launched later in 2018.
Judges’ comments
The survey carried out by Incisive Health and MSD took a brave approach to some very big questions in Alzheimer’s disease. The campaign was well thought through and the data really was the catalyst for communicating and highlighting a specific issue.
