I am delighted to welcome you to a very special publication about the 34th Alzheimer Europe Conference (#34AEC), which took place from 8 to 10 October 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. If you were at the conference, we hope you enjoy looking back at some of the highlights from the event. If you were unable to join us, we hope that this publication gives you a real flavour of our conference and encourages you to join us for a future event, perhaps even for our upcoming 2025 conference (#35AEC) taking place in Bologna, Italy, from 6 to 8 October 2025 under the banner “Connecting science and communities: The future of dementia care.”
In this publication, we have a “Warmup” section, where you will find coverage of a number of important pre-conference meetings, organised by the European Group of Governmental Experts on Dementia, the European Alzheimer’s Disease Consortium, the INTERDEM network, the European Working Group of People with Dementia (EWGPWD) and the European Dementia Carers Working Group (EDCWG).
We then take a look at all of the conference plenary sessions (Opening Ceremony, plenaries 1 to 5, Closing Ceremony) and I am especially pleased to note that Plenary 1, “Two voices, one story – navigating dementia together,” was organised and presented by people with lived experience of dementia, the members of the EWGPWD and EDCWG. It was a real pleasure to chair this session and Alzheimer Europe was extremely proud to be able to include this important plenary in its 2024 conference programme. The work of the EWGPWD and the EDCWG, and the collective voices of both of these groups’ members, are vital to our work.
On day 2, plenaries 2 and 3 explored topics around “Making dementia a priority” and “Innovation in dementia care,” whilst on the third and final day of the conference, plenaries 4 and 5 included presentations around “Intersectionality in dementia” and “Brain health and prevention.”
On top of the coverage of the ancillary meetings and plenary sessions in Geneva, we are pleased to share some other aspects of the event, including:
- a special symposium on “Preparing for new AD treatments” organised by Alzheimer Europe and supported by the gold sponsorship from Lilly
- a special symposium presenting the work of ten early-stage researchers, who were selected by our jury to benefit from attendance bursaries provided by the Alzheimer Europe Foundation and supported by the silver sponsorship of Biogen
- the “Rolling for Dementia” campaign led by Golnaz Atefi, a dementia researcher based at Alzheimer’s Centre Limburg, who skated over 1,000km across Europe on her way to Geneva to raise awareness about the importance of diversity and representation in dementia research
- some of the research projects in which we are involved, presenting their work at the event
- some thoughts from our conference co-hosts, Alzheimer Switzerland and Alzheimer Geneva
- highlights from social media.
I also invite you to view the photo gallery (pages 24 and 25).
I hope you enjoy this conference publication!
Jean Georges,
Executive Director, Alzheimer Europe
