Healthcare and social service providers play a critical role in social and systemic change that can positively impact 2SLGBTQI people living with dementia (PLWD), their unpaid carers, and other marginalized groups. The Egale and NIA research report Coming Out and Coming In to Living with Dementia: Enhancing Support for 2SLGBTQI People Living with Dementia and their Primary Unpaid Carers identified several opportunities for enhancing programming, policy, advocacy, and research in Canada.

Below are key recommendations and actions from the report that you and your organization can take towards social and systemic change.

Build 2SLGBTQI-inclusive dementia-related services and community spaces

🔨 Build: Develop more opportunities for 2SLGBTQI PLWD to come together in support and community.
🔨 Build: Develop a comprehensive repository or directory of resources and organizations to support community groups, organizations, and healthcare and aging care services in better supporting 2SLGBTQI PLWD and their carers and significant others.
🎓 Educate: Integrate dementia-focused discussions and education into existing
2SLGBTQI support and social groups.
🎓 Educate: Create and increase opportunities for accessible education and professional development for potential care providers, including 2SLGBTQI community members, professional care providers, and front-line service workers

Increase recognition and support for primary unpaid carers of 2SLGBTQI people living with dementia

🔨 Build: Create dedicated spaces for primary unpaid carers of 2SLGBTQI PLWD to share with, learn from, and support one another (e.g., support groups, virtual information and resource sharing platforms).
🔨 Build: Address a lack of knowledge of where to go for support among unpaid carers, for example through the creation of local directories that identify general support and 2SLGBTQI inclusive services and groups.
🔍 Recognize: Increase recognition of the diverse positions that a primary unpaid carer may have in relation to the person they care for, including in workplace and government care policies and leaves.
🔍 Recognize: Develop greater awareness about the diverse and multiple ways that carers may be related to and involved with caring for a PLWD (e.g., community member, partner, friend):

  • Through workplace educational opportunities.
  • By diversifying examples provided in dementia support literature.
  • Through broader public awareness campaigns.

Enhance supports for 2SLGBTQI communities and carers through structural and systems-level change

🎓 Educate: Integrate 2SLGBTQI histories and experiences into core course content for healthcare and social services provider training across a range of professions:

  • For example, in nursing, personal support worker/personal care aide training, social work, gerontological recreation training programs

🏦 Service: Create more services and reduce barriers to accessing dementiarelated care and support for rural and small-town communities.
🏦 Service: Address systems navigation challenges that PLWD and carers face:

  • Create navigator roles, increasing knowledge of dementia care services in information hotlines.
  • Create a local directory of services with accessible options for further support.

🔍 Recognize: Increase funding for research and direct services within the intersections of 2SLGBTQI identities and dementia care.

What steps have you and your organization already taken to contribute to social and systemic change efforts? What further efforts can you be part of?

We encourage you to tailor initiatives in response to these recommendations to your local context and strengths, set goals that reflect your resource capacity, and seek out partnerships to achieve even more.


Public Health Agency of Canada / Agence de la santé publique du Canada

This work was funded by a Dementia Community Investment grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Public Health Agency of Canada