Dr Serena Sabatini has recently joined the Community and Public Health Approaches to Dementia (ComPHAD) project, which aims to develop new and sustainable approaches to estimate dementia prevalence, and identify older people’s needs in diverse communities across England.

The project will explore under-served / under-researched groups, e.g., homeless people, the prison population, in order to estimate the prevalence of dementia in these communities. They may have higher or lower risk of dementia but may also be less likely to be captured in an accurate and timely way by routine data sources .

A first phase of the project consists of identifying existing local cohorts from which data can potentially be collected in a second phase of the project. Serena and colleagues are looking for either ongoing cohorts, or past cohorts from which contacts are available, and participants who have  expressed an interest in being contacted for future research.

The project is funded by an NIHR grant (NIHR Three Schools: Dementia Research Programme Improving the lives of people living with dementia and carers 2021-2024) with Carol Brayne (University of Cambridge) as lead applicant and scholars from the University of Nottingham (Prof Blossom Stephan and Prof Nadeem Qureshi), University of Newcastle, University College London, London School of Economics, and Plymouth University as co-applicants.  

The project aims to provide the building blocks for estimation of dementia and associated conditions including underserved populations. Such potential populations include South Asian, African Caribbean, African, Romany and Traveller, prison, homeless, disadvantaged White, coastal and rural communities. In this initial phase we are seeking to map out which potential cohorts of underserved populations are available locally. Two of these available cohorts will be selected for future data collection.

Have you previously carried out research involving under-served communities? Serena Sabatini of our Centre for Dementia would love to speak to you. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you think you could help.