The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative Hosts Davos Roundtable of International Leaders to Promote Brain Health and Healthy Aging
DAC to Announce Expansion of its Work with the Global South
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – DECEMBER 13, 2023 – The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC) announces its participation alongside the 54th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 15-19, 2024. Returning to where the organization began in 2021, DAC will report significant progress and launch its next wave of action. This year, DAC will expand efforts, including in the Global South, to build on the substantial strides it has made diversifying global research – and paving the way for early detection of cognitive impairment in primary care.
Resulting from its multi-million dollar investment in 19 pilot projects, DAC spurred solid progress in a range of countries with an array of innovations. In Armenia, mobile vans reached thousands, including some people with reversible cognitive impairment. In Kenya, rural community health workers dispelled myths about dementia. In the U.S., large healthcare systems, including Indiana University, changed practice by adding brain health navigators. To promote widespread use, DAC developed a customizable method for health systems throughout the world to develop their own early detection programs.
DAC is delivering on its promise to link, scale and diversify Alzheimer’s research by initiating work with 23 global cohorts including the Global South – bringing research to places it’s never been before – from Malaysia, Brazil, the Rio Grande Valley in the US, to Kenya and Latin America. This critical work seeds tangible, growing progress by validating tools that are culturally relevant and can be used to deliver low-cost treatments, not previously available to these populations.
DAC Roundtable
On Tuesday, January 16, from 12:30-14:00 CET, DAC will host a high-level roundtable at its Impact Venue, just steps from the Congress Center, bringing together prominent leaders in government, industry, academic, and global communities to organize a Brain Health Ambassadors Network to extend its reach to the primary care level. This event will be open to media.
The event will open with remarks on brain health, universal health coverage and economic growth by George Vradenburg, Founding Chairman of DAC. This roundtable is being planned in conjunction with Dr. Victor Dzau, President of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and member of the DAC board, and Professor Miia Kivipelto of the Karolinska Institute and Founder of the FINGERS Brain Health Institute. The roundtable will feature a discussion of how modifying 12 risk factors might prevent or delay up to 40% of dementias. The roundtable will also address a rallying cry from nations around the world for more inclusive research. DAC is committed to diversifying research, finding lower cost medicines to treat symptoms – and moving the focus of brain health to the primary care setting to increase access for all people in all places.
Brain Health Impact Conversations
In addition to the roundtable, DAC will host a series of conversations about global coordination of brain health and healthy aging with experts from business, industry, government, and academia. One primary topic is the economics of brain health. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that impaired brain health costs the global economy up to $8.5 trillion a year in lost productivity. Also, the Milken Institute found that 50% of economic growth is tied to advances in public health and medical innovation.
“Since we launched at Davos, DAC has made significant headway delivering on our promise to diversify Alzheimer’s research around the globe, adding pharmacists, optometrists, community and public health workers and others to the frontlines to help us beat Alzheimer’s, and made clinical research more efficient and more accessible,” Vradenburg said.
“But never has our work seemed as vital as it does now, as DAC links brain health, primary care, and solutions to later-life diseases. We are ready to lock arms with world leaders in Davos and push for progress by the upcoming G7 and G20 meetings.”
About the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative
Launched at the World Economic Forum’s 2021 meeting on The Davos Agenda, The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative is a multi-stakeholder partnership committed to aligning stakeholders with a new vision for our collective global response against the challenges Alzheimer’s presents to patients, caregivers and healthcare infrastructures. Convened by The World Economic Forum and The Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease (CEOi) and fueled by a mission of service to the estimated 150 million families and half a billion people inevitably impacted by this disease by 2050, DAC is a collaborative for the benefit of all people, in all places.
To learn more about the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative’s work on brain health at the World Economic Forum, visit our website.
Media: Please contact Susan Oliver
soliver@davosalzheimerscollaborative.org | +1 (703) 216-4078