The local and global imperative to raise public awareness and knowledge about dementia

Raising public awareness and advocacy about an issue or condition is key to developing and implementing effective strategies to address it. If the general public have a poor understanding of a particular condition or believe that nothing can be done, then they will not raise their collective voice to ensure that action is taken by policy makers and governments. Increased public awareness and advocacy around HIV and cancer has led to a transformation of services and treatments worldwide and stimulated research and innovation that has produced very tangible results in terms of disease modifying interventions and cures. By contrast, dementia, despite its global significance in terms of human impact and health and social care costs, has been lurking in the backwaters of public awareness, cloaked in stigma, and is only now beginning to come out of the shadows.