On Thursday 22 January, Alzheimer Nederland organised a symposium in honour of Marco Blom’s farewell. He leaves a legacy in terms of scientific infrastructure and results both in the Netherlands as well as abroad. To honour Marco’s contribution, Alzheimer Nederland has re-named their prize for best thesis to the ‘Marco Blom Thesis Prize’.
During the symposium, we looked back at 30 years of Alzheimer Nederland and Marco’s achievements. His career parallels the huge growth and maturation of Alzheimer Nederland as an organisation and the field of dementia research, both nationally and internationally. In recent years, he served as the Scientific Director of Alzheimer Nederland.
Thirty years ago, the concept of the Alzheimer Café came to life. It started with one Café in Leiden. Today, there are almost 300 Cafés in the Netherlands and over 50 other countries have adopted the concept of Alzheimer Café.
In 2000, the first Alzheimer Centres combining top referent patient care and world class research were established in Maastricht and Amsterdam. To date, there are six Alzheimer Centres throughout the Netherlands. The Deltaplan Dementia, predecessor of the current National Dementia Strategy, originated as a bottom-up initiative from the field and was launched in 2013. This was an important step forward be-cause it had an inherent public-private character, encompassing both research and care along with a dementia friendly society. Currently, over 750,000 Dutch citizens have completed the online dementia friendly training, which is also hosted by Alzheimer Nederland.
Alzheimer Nederland has a long history of funding dementia research in a wide range of research topics, and it has been evident that investments in research have skyrocketed over the years. One important focus within our research programme is to support early-stage researchers. We do this with several grants, activities and prizes. As Marco is a very much appreciated colleague in the field of dementia research, both nationally and internationally, we decided to honour his contribution and rename the prize for best thesis after him.
Marco is a current member of the Alzheimer Europe Board and will continue in this position. Following his character of building bridges, Marco’s advice for the future is to continue and strengthen the collaboration between scientific re-search, society, government and business partners.
