Work-Package 1: Exploration
Key outputs include a deeper understanding of the relationships between sensory loss, dementia and mental ill health in older adults, disseminated as a portfolio of published paper in high impact journals. Findings have been reported widely and supported further research and key high impact works, such as the Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention (Livingston et al., 2020), which highlighted the importance of mid-life hearing impairment as a potentially modifiable risk factor for dementia.
Work-Package 2: Assessment
Key outputs include: (1) Published papers on the availability of online screening tools for hearing, vision and cognition loss; (2) An online Toolkit for professionals with guidance about how to support people with dementia with concurrent hearing/vison loss; (3) an online screening tool, the e-checker, for self-screening of hearing, vision and cognitive loss; (4) validation of a commonly used cognitive screening tool, the MoCA for hearing and vision and validation of a functional assessment tool, the DemPAL for people with sensory impairment.
Work-Package 3: Intervention
Key outputs include: (1) Published papers on the development of the intervention and its field trial, which revealed positive results for people with dementia when hearing and vision is improved; (2) a completed large-scale randomized controlled trial of a Sensory Support Intervention for people living at home with hearing and/or vision loss, leading to international conference presentations and published papers (being completed); (3) international practice guidelines on best practice regarding hearing, vision and cognitive loss in people with dementia.
Work-Package 4: Valuation
Key results are: (1) A published review on quality-of-life tools used for dementia HE analyses; (2) models of the cost effectiveness of a hearing-vision intervention to support people at home with dementia and concurrent hearing and vision loss; (3) a published paper of an econometric analyses from the SHARE meta-dataset.
Work-Package 5: Participation, Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation
Key results include published papers on: (1) PPI in dementia scoping review; (2) Training of a PPI Research User Group; (3) Impact of involving a PPI Research User Group in a research program such as SENSE-Cog. The guidelines provided by (2) have supported the development of other new PPI groups related to dementia, such as the HRB-CTN Dementia Trials Ireland PPI group in Ireland and a PPI consultation group based in Athens, Greece.
