10-11 January 2025, The Team House, Noordhoek, Cape Town, SA
Introduction
All countries collect and report health, social, and economic indicators to various agencies, but these data are scattered and me-consuming to collate and visualize. As a result, valuable resources remain underutilized, and health and social disparities persist, reinforcing the narrative that Africa lacks sufficient data and faces imminent catastrophe, such as a pending dementia tsunami. The limited availability of comprehensive and user-friendly information hinders the adoption of whole-system life-course approaches. Instead, disease-specific strategies dominate, driven by resource-intensive and impractical interventions that ignore modifiable risk factors.
The global dementia research agenda overly emphasizes expensive diagnostics and treatments, overlooking modifiable risk factors and most of the world’s population. To counter these narratives, it is imperative to shift perspectives on data and dementia in Africa. The World Health Organization’s Brain Health across the Life Course framework is used to guide the selection of and organize a preliminary set of indicators. To ensure efficient data processing and linkage of datasets using country-level identifiers, GitHub and R-coding best practices have been adopted.
The goal of this project is to shift the global policy development and research agenda from its disease-specific focus on Dementia to life-course brain health, demonstrating the availability of actionable brain health data for countries in Africa. It will showcase that brain health extends beyond Dementia prevention and is relevant to individuals, health systems, and governments. Indeed, shifting this narrative is a crucial step in redirecting resources.
The following are the anticipated project outcomes: 1. Empower local researchers, policymakers, activists, and interested citizens with access to information for action. We will surface, collate, and frame existing data while providing workshops and training to enhance data visualization skills. 2. Support meaningful discussions about contextually relevant life course brain health in Africa, appealing to the general public by creating core visualizations showing the impact of brain health across the life course, encompassing various domains such as economics and climate. 3. Develop new interactive dashboards and visualizations focusing on specific areas of interest, like early-life factors impacting brain health risk and resilience. 4. Write and present findings to a broad audience, both inside and outside the academic community to significantly contribute to changing how brain health is perceived, ultimately benefiting individuals and communities in Africa and beyond.
This curriculum is designed to provide comprehensive training on using data for brain health initiatives and to inspire participants to become thought leaders in the field, driving forward the agenda for better brain health outcomes in African populations. This short course will equip participants with skills to shift the global policy development and research agenda from its disease-specific focus on Dementia to life-course brain health, demonstrating the availability of actionable brain health data for countries in Africa. The curriculum covers science communication (writing policy briefs, op-eds etc) and technical aspects of visualizations.
Participants will be awarded a Certificate of Participation.
Kirsten Bobrow, Global Brain Health Institute, Canada Wambūi Karanja, Global Brain Health Institute, Kenya Lebo Molete, Atlantic Fellows Ifeanyi Nsofor, Atlantic Fellows