On 14 April 2021, Alzheimer Europe held its kick-off meeting for the ethics working group, which this year will be addressing sex, gender and sexuality in the context of dementia. Members of the working group were from several different countries and included people with and without dementia, with different gender and sexual identities, and with backgrounds in research, service provision, policy, psychology, nursing, philosophy, economics and living with dementia. Because of the pandemic, it was a virtual meeting and so relatively short but the members of the group covered a range of important issues, defined the potential scope of the work and discussed some overriding guiding frameworks such as intersectionality, heteronormativity, micro-aggressions and risk aversion. It was agreed that the target audience of the future report and recommendations would be policy makers, and health and social care students and providers because they are the ones who can make the necessary changes to improve the lived experience of people with dementia of all sexes, genders and gender/sexual identities.
The group is chaired by Dianne Gove and the members include Jean Georges (from Alzheimer Europe), Annemarie Schumacher Dimech (from Switzerland), Lucie Hájková and Martina Mátlová (from the Czech Republic), Fabrice Gzil (from France), Helga Rohra (from Germany), Charles Scerri and Anthony Scerri (from Malta), Linn Sandberg and Karin Westerlund (from Sweden) and Phil Harper, Patrick Ettenes, Andrea Capstick and Aileen Aileen Beatty (from the United Kingdom).
