Dr Evangelia Chrysikou awarded funding from UCL Grand Challenges and Knowledge Exchange

The two project titles that have been awarded funding are ‘Let's not forget those who forget! What individuals with dementia think of the design of their living environment?’ and ‘Let's not forget those who forget! Knowledge exchange on participatory design for environments for dementia.’

In health care environment research, we know that the involvement of end-users, especially of patients, is critical for a biopsychosocial supportive environment. Yet, in the case of patients with dementia communication can be challenging and we need to establish special communication channels. There are already some communication tools used by care professionals but this knowledge has only partially crossed the field of participatory interventions such as art interventions. However, participatory build environment interventions which tend to be more complex involve only managers, staff and in some cases carers as we lack tools on how to involve patients especially in progressed dementia. 

Lia and Loukia commented: 

“Our proposed set of activities aims to cover this gap via research activities and by developing a knowledge exchange environment between academia and the industry, in order to improve care for people living with dementia. 

We are looking across disciplines at the existing literature to identify existing tools that we could use or adapt. In this process, we involve end-users and academics from different fields to enrich and discuss the findings of our review and we run some focus groups with dementia patients on how to collaborate with them on built environment co-design.”