A prominent childhood memory is of my grandparents living with and then dying from dementia. As is universal with dementia, there was a double blow: watching my grandparents lose their identity and seeing the suffering of those closest to them.
As a junior doctor on a specialist dementia ward when I was in my 20s, I watched the same stories play out for family after family, feeling largely powerless to help. Now in my 30s, I conduct public health research to understand what we can do to prevent, delay or improve the experience of dementia – the leading cause of death in England.
