It provides a set of practical tools from seven different low-and middle-income countries to help others think about the impact of stigma and how to challenge stigma against people living with dementia and their care partners.

The toolkit:

• shares first-hand experiences of stigma and discrimination and the consequences that it has for people living with dementia and their families –indeed describing the painful scars that result from being shunned or excluded;
• conceptualises stigma as problems of knowledge (ignorance), problems of attitudes (prejudice), and problems of behaviour (discrimination).
• provides evidence-based approaches to reducing stigma and discrimination illustrated through a series of case studies showing how people living with dementia and carers confronted stigma in their own life.

STRiDE colleagues want to share the Toolkit as widely as possible. However, with this toolkit, they also make a call to action to go beyond improving knowledge and awareness raising and to consider how we can change hurtful behaviours, unfair treatment and policies and promote inclusion. An important aspect of achieving this social change is to empower people living with dementia to lead these initiatives and the Toolkit discusses strategies for this.

Read the Toolkit here and share it widely.