The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-01-06.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has assessed or commissioned on potential links between prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and maintaining positive thinking into later life.
Jane Ellison
Reducing the incidence of dementia, improving dementia research, raising awareness and improving the treatment and care of people with dementia is a key priority for the Government. That is why in February 2015, the Prime Minister launched his Challenge on Dementia 2020 as a successor to the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia 2012-15. Under the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia 2020, we set an ambition for:
– improved public awareness and understanding of the factors, which increase the risk of developing dementia and how people can reduce their risk by living more healthily. This should include a new healthy ageing campaign and access to tools such as a personalised risk assessment calculator as part of the NHS Health Check;
– increased identification of effective ways in which people can reduce their personal risk of developing dementia, including cardio-vascular and cognitive strategies, and ways of encouraging these approaches to improve public health and wellbeing; and
– overall spending for dementia research from all sectors to double by 2025.
Research funding for dementia research doubled under the last Government and will be maintained to total over £300 million over the period of the current government.
