Dementia Awareness Week Evening Talks

This year during Dementia Awareness Week we’re hosting some free evening talks with experts in dementia on topics of interest. Our aim to build greater awareness of dementia and offer practical tips and advice where possible.  

Event on Wednesday 18th May 2022

Speaker 1 : Dr Pierre Krolak-Salmon

Topic : Diagnosing dementia

Time : 19.30 – 21.00

Audience : Professionals

Hosted by : Dr Matt Doyle, Trustee of Dementia Jersey

Dementia Jersey Evening Talks Dr Pierre Krolak-Salmon

Professor Pierre Krolak-Salmon is a neurologist and geriatrician at the University Hospital of Lyon (France), director of Clinical Research Memory Centre of Lyon and of the Clinical Research Centre “Elderly, Brain and Frailty”, head of the Social Cognition and Cognitive Disorders research group at Neuroscience Center of Lyon. Professor Krolak-Salmon attended medical school at the University of Lyon between 1987 and 1994, he completed his Neurosciences Master in 1999 and his PhD on brain dynamics of facial emotional expression recognition in 2004. During the course of his career, Professor Krolak-Salmon has also studied at the Wellcome Trust in London, UK and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA. Professor Krolak-Salmon currently has an active teaching role at the University Claude Bernard in Lyon, in the fields of geriatrics, neurology, neuroscience and neuropsychology. His main areas of research interest include biomarkers (CSF and neuroimaging) and predictors of autonomy loss in dementia; social cognition and emotion recognition; clinical neurology and geriatrics.

Speaker 2 : Dr Emer MacSweeney

Topic : Dementia medication

Time : 19.30 – 21.00

Audience : Professionals

Hosted by : Dr Matt Doyle, Trustee of Dementia Jersey

Dementia Jersey Evening Talks Dr PEmer MacSweeney

Emer’s medical knowledge and training in neurosciences, corporate experience, personal credibility and contacts, enabled her to assemble a team of Brain and Mind Experts to create Re:Cognition Health in 2011; an internationally recognized expert provider of  the best diagnosis, treatment and hope for people with memory loss and other cognitive symptoms.

Focusing, initially on the Global Pandemic, Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and working closely with providers of sophisticated biomarkers and pharmaceutical sponsor’s R&D to provide new medications; Emer’s team have enabled thousands of individuals to gain early access to novel diagnostic tests and new medications, designed to halt or slow progression of AD, through international clinical trials. This work, for which Emer was awarded an UK “EY Entrepreneur of the Year” award for Societal Impact in 2019 and multiple other awards, continues to grow. 

Emer graduated at the University of London and underwent postgraduate training in medicine at the London postgraduate hospitals. Dr MacSweeney trained in radiology at Hammersmith Hospital and neuroradiology at the National Hospital Queen Square. She was appointed as a Consultant Neuroradiologist and later Director of Neuroradiology at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital, St George’s Healthcare Trust, specialising in diagnostic and interventional neuroradiology. 

The Re:Cognition Health’s clinics  in London, Birmingham, Guildford, Plymouth, Winchester, Bristol and Washington DC USA,  are major centres for diagnosis and treatment of brain and mind disorders for patients of all ages; in addition to globally recognized centres for international trials of disease-modifying and new symptomatic drugs, for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions.

Event on Thursday 19th May 2022

Speaker 1 : Dr Juan Melendez

Topic : Dementia – Risk reduction

Time : 19.30 – 21.00

Audience : Professionals

Hosted by : Dr Matt Doyle, Trustee of Dementia Jersey

Dementia Jersey Evening Talks Dr Juan Melendez

Listen to international speaker and dementia expert Dr Juan Melendez talk about risk reduction and hear from author Peter Berry about tackling early onset dementia and his empowering message about living well with dementia.  

Dr Melendez will be exploring the concept of brain health as opposed to just dementia risk reduction and how it is everyone’s responsibility. He will clarify the association between some of the commonest chronic health conditions and dementia and raise awareness of the importance of including brain health as part of women’s health (menopause transition).

Dr Juan Melendez has a professional background in General and Family Medicine from Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona. He is an Associate Specialist in Older Adults Mental Health in Jersey with special interest in Cognitive Disorders and the Clinical Lead at Jersey Memory Assessment Service. 

Juan participates in research in Alzheimer’s Prevention as part of a research consortium based in USA. He is also an International Consultant for the Centre for Brain Health at Florida Atlantic University and a member of the Women Alzheimer’s Movement at the Alzheimer’s Prevention Consortium in LA. Juan also collaborates with different organisations, including FASE Foundation (Ecuador) and AFANCAR (Spain) in matters related to Dementia Risk Reduction.

Speaker 2 : Peter Berry

Topic : Living well with dementia

Time : 19.30 – 21.00

Audience : Professionals

Hosted by : Dr Matt Doyle, Trustee of Dementia Jersey

Dementia Jersey Evening Talks Peter Berry

Peter Berry (57) was diagnosed with early onset dementia aged 50. Peter is a passionate advocate for empowering individuals and their families to live well with dementia and regularly delivers speeches and presentations to organisations.  Peter was one of the contributors to the Channel Four programme “The Restaurant that Makes Mistakes.”  Peter’s first book, “Slow Puncture, Living well with Dementia” (ghosted by his cycling friend, Deb Bunt) was published in September 2020 and his second book, “Walk with Me: Musings Through the Dementia Fog” was published in December 2021. Peter spends his days cycling around the glorious Suffolk countryside and being the very embodiment of his own doctrine of living well with dementia. 

Event on Friday 20th May 2022

Speaker 1 : Dr Sian Wareing-Jones

Topic : Caring for someone with dementia

Time : 19.30 – 21.00

Audience : Family carers

Hosted by : Claudine Snape, CEO Dementia Jersey

Dementia Jersey Dr Sian Wareing-Jones

Sian initially trained to be a teacher and then in 2005 began her counselling training, reaching qualified status in 2010. She has worked for Dementia Jersey since then along with managing her own private practice. 

In 2010 she began an MA in Counselling which included research focussed on the lived experiences of carers of people with dementia, being awarded the MA in 2012. Following this she gained a place to undertake PhD research at Edinburgh University’s School of Health Science, studying mostly by distance in Jersey. She was awarded a PhD in 2016. 

Sian now has many years of experience working alongside people with dementia and their supporters and carers. She leads the team of Dementia Advisors with Dementia Jersey, offers counselling and dementia advice sessions for both people with dementia and carers, heads up the Lived Experience Advisory Panel and facilitates a range of support groups. Her varied work means she works not only from the Dementia Jersey office, but also arranges meetings in people’s own homes, or in care homes and hospitals with support groups meeting in various other venues across the island. 

Speaker 2 : Chris Roberts and Jayne Goodrick

Topic : How we tackle dementia together

Time : 19.30 – 21.00

Audience : Family carers

Hosted by : Claudine Snape, CEO Dementia Jersey

Dementia Jersey Evening Talks Chris Roberts

Chris Roberts lives with mixed dementia, Vascular and Alzheimer’s, and also has Emphysema and Arthritis. He is the Chairperson of the European Working Group of People with Dementia. He spends a lot of his time raising awareness of dementia to challenge associated stigma and promote better services and support for people with dementia and their families. He speaks nationally and internationally about dementia, usually supported by his wife Jayne Goodrick. Their lives were portrayed in a BBC Panorama Documentary titled “Living With Dementia, Chris’s Story” and in a BBC Wales, “Week In Week Out” programme, titled “Who Will Look After Mum, Dad or Me?”

We all have a role to play in making Jersey a dementia friendly island and that’s what Dementia Awareness Week is all about. Getting involved could be as simple as signing up to a free Dementia Friends session on a lunch break or popping by the awareness stall. 

If you have any questions about how you can get involved then just give us a call on 01534 723519 

Get in touch