On 14th November we held a meeting in the Houses of Parliament to discuss Lewy body dementia with MPs and Peers. The team from Join Dementia Research also came along to discuss their work on recruiting volunteers for research studies and drug trials.

Among those who attended were Caroline Dinenage MP, Minister for Care at the Department of Health & Social Care. Afterwards, the Minister tweeted her support for our work:

Because of the similarities to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, Lewy Body Dementia is often misdiagnosed. With similar symptoms, hallucinations and swings of consciousness the @lbsorg is raising awareness of LBD to help encourage correct diagnosis and proper treatment. #lewybody pic.twitter.com/i5KjsguiAh

— Caroline Dinenage (@cj_dinenage) November 19, 2018

We were also joined by Debbie Abrahams MP, Chair of the All Party Group on Dementia and our Ambassador Conor McGinn MP, with ten MP and Peers attending in total.

Every conversation with policymakers helps raise awareness of Lewy body dementia and we hope that all attendees went away with more of an understanding of the disease. We also asked them to speak to local health services about how well they are doing with referrals to specialist services and diagnosis of dementia sub-types.