Dementia experts to descend on Ballina

DEMENTIA experts from around Australia will descend on Ballina to discuss risk factors for the disease in October.

Speakers at the 2024 Dementia Inclusive Ballina Symposium will include University of Sydney Professor Susan Kurrle Geriatrician, who featured in the ABC series Old People’s Home for Teenagers, Dr Suraj Samtani from the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing at the University of NSW and Associate Professor Sarah Russell from Brisbane’s James Cook University.

Dementia Inclusive Ballina Alliance chair Anne Moehead OAM said the theme for this year’s symposium is Fostering Resilience to Dementia by Recognising and Reducing Risk, based on a 2020 Lancet Commission report which identified 12 risk factors.

They are obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, less education, hypertension, depression, hearing impairment, excessive alcohol consumption, social isolation, air pollution, living in an urban area and diseases such as diabetes.

Topics to be covered at the event at Ballina RSL Club on October 25 include ageing with severe traumatic brain injury, the role of GPs across all dementia risk factors, and young onset dementia, which is any form of dementia diagnosed in someone under the age of 65.

Dementia becomes more common as people age. Twenty-seven per cent of Ballina Shire’s population were aged 65 years or older in 2021 compared to 22 per cent in regional NSW, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Moehead, who runs a weekly memory clinic at a medical centre in Alstonville and received an Order of Australia medal in 2006 for her contribution to dementia and nursing, said nobody wants to get dementia.

“I do a lot of talks at Rotary Clubs and Lions Clubs and everyone wants to know what they can do to avoid it,” she said.

“Some of this is in your hands and you can control it.

“If you reduce these risk factors you know you have done the best you can.”

For more information, visit dementiainclusiveballina.org.au/event/dementia-inclusive-ballina-symposium-2024/