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    Funded Studies Details

    Funded Studies Details

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    2020 Pilot Awards for Global Brain Health Leaders (GBHI)

    Rewriting the Dementia Narrative Across the Globe through Story

    Dana Walrath, Ph.D., MFA
    Awakening Sanctuary Inc dba Living Well Group
    Burlington, VT - United States



    Dr. Dana Walrath will use creative writing to spread awareness about dementia. With her grant, Dr. Walrath will create a graphic memoir documenting the last four years of her mother’s dementia journey. The book will also include an anthropological exploration of living with and dying from dementia across the globe. Besides adding the experiences of living with dementia in United States, Dr. Walrath’s book will also include perspectives from low and middle income countries as well as an in-depth field-work she has conducted in Armenia, Japan and Ireland. Dr. Walrath will write her book in an entirely comic form and she believes that comics could contribute certain advantages to the narrative such as – provide accessibility to individuals living with dementia who may be losing verbal capacities, enable non-linear storytelling and also support the ease of translation for global dissemination. By raising the visibility of dementia and aging through arts, the study could present a novel approach to reducing the stigma attached with dementia and spread awareness of dementia.

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