We are delighted to announce recently awarded pilot study funding to Nicholas Jenkins, Chancellor’s Fellow at the School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh to:

•  Develop a collaboration with an award-winning playwright to host a one act play about the experience of early-onset dementia, to service users and staff at Alzheimer Scotland Lothian Early Onset Support Service, as well as senior managers and policy makers
   
• Facilitate post-play workshops with participants to explore their thoughts and reflections on the play, their experiences of early onset dementia and their priorities for health and social care policy and practice, thus collating key themes that will feed into shaping future research proposals
• Create professionally acted video-vignettes, co-directed by service users, which will serve as tools for future research and dissemination activities

In line with a participatory action research framework (11, this project represents the initial stages of a long-term research and knowledge exchange relationship with staff and families at Alzheimer Scotland’s Lothian Early Onset Support Service (LEOSS).  However, the digital vignettes will be made available to the wider research community for use, for example in qualitative studies of the impact of early onset dementia.

For further information, please email n.e.jenkins@ed.ac.uk">n.e.jenkins@ed.ac.uk or telephone 0131 650 4028