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Funded by a grant from Alzheimer’s Research UK's Inspire Fund, the Healthy Brain, Healthy Life public engagement project aims to create dialogue and engage with minority ethnic communities around brain health and dementia.

The goal is to increase knowledge around brain health and the positive steps people can take to improve their brain health and reduce their risk of dementia. 

The project team use traditional food, music, storytelling and other creative approaches in a series of workshops exploring brain health. Through the workshops, we will also co-create digital stories and culturally tailored resources, such as recipes, to reach wider minority ethnic audiences.

A project dissemination event on Wednesday 26 April 2023 shared experiences of the project, information about the workshops and their impact, and showcased the outputs created by project participants.  

Why are we doing this project?

Despite national strategies including the NHS Dementia prevention strategy and the dementia profile on preventing well, there is still a disconnect between healthy lifestyle practices, brain health and dementia, particularly for individuals from minority ethnic communities.

Unlike other long-term conditions which manifest physically, conditions related to brain health and dementia are difficult to talk about and people may attribute causes to spiritual factors, old age, or mental illness. There is a need for initiatives that reduce stigma, create dialogue and learning around the topic area”

Minority ethnic community member 

Dr Sophia Amenyah

Dr Sophia Amenyah

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

"This project will be a conversation starter and encourage discussions with minority ethnic communities about the broad impacts of dementia and empower people to improve their attitude towards brain health and dementia.”

What are we doing?

We held a series of monthly interactive workshops around five themes to share knowledge and talk about brain health and dementia prevention. The workshops were open to individuals from minority ethnic communities and were all held in person on Bournemouth University's campuses.

The workshops

Sharing our learning

Digital stories, poems, recipes and other artefacts co-created with participants, best practice guidance and other resources from the workshops will be shared widely via our networks, websites, social media, publications and training events to optimise reach and further engage the wider community.