January is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month in Canada. Learn what that means and how you can get involved.
What is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month?
Each January, the Alzheimer Society supports and leads Canada’s Alzheimer’s Awareness Month.
During this month, we at the Society encourage organizations across Canada, and individuals like you, to learn more about dementia and its stark impact on Canadians.
And while Alzheimer’s Awareness Month may stop at the end of January, the experiences of people who live with dementia do not. As such, we ask you to take what you’ve learned during the month and continue to share it throughout the year.
By understanding what people living with dementia experience in their day-to-day-lives – their struggles, their successes and their hopes – together we can raise awareness of dementia throughout Canada.
Awareness is the first step to fighting stigma, reinforcing human rights and pushing for policy change, as well as other actions that can lift up people living with dementia.
Five ways you can support Alzheimer’s Awareness Month in 2025
1. Spread the word
You can help support Alzheimer’s Awareness Month. It’s an easy start to helping your fellow Canadians who are living with this serious disease. This year, we are encouraging you to learn more about strategies for living well with dementia, along with tips and advice on maintaining your overall health and wellness. Find out more and take the first step today.
2. Connect with your local Society
One of the central themes to this year’s campaign is Community. We encourage you to find out what’s going on at your local Alzheimer Society, including how your Society is helping your community and how you can get involved.
Visit alzheimer.ca/Find to get connected to your closest Society in a few short clicks!
3. Learn more about dementia
Another theme this year is Knowledge. Learning more about dementia through the Alzheimer Society’s many resources can, as one example, help someone identify the warning signs of dementia and get them an early diagnosis, leading to that person getting the help and support they need earlier.
A little learning can make all the difference in helping someone live as well with dementia as possible.
4. Listen to the stories of people with lived experience
The best way to understand the impact of dementia, and the need for further help and support, is to hear directly from people with lived experience of it.
Over the next little while, the Alzheimer Society will be publishing more stories from people living with dementia, caregivers and researchers alike. We encourage you to read and share them among people you know. Perhaps there is someone who will want to share their story as well!
5. Support our other initiatives to raise awareness
- Besides Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, the Alzheimer Society also supports people living with dementia assert their rights and fight stigma through the Canadian Charter of Rights for People with Dementia.
- We work to change the lives of those living with dementia. However, we need to do more to combat systemic oppression. Here is how we are changing on the issue of race and dementia.
- The Alzheimer Society of Canada believes people with dementia should have a voice in the work that impacts them. We want to bring people from all over the country together to be part of the conversation by becoming a member of our Advisory Group of people living with dementia.
- We also support the implementation of Canada’s first-ever national dementia strategy that can systemically reduce stigma against dementia in Canada.
- We’re committed to taking a person-first approach to the Dementia-Friendly Canada project to ensure all Canadians living with dementia feel valued and empowered, that organizations be inclusive and accessible and that everyone uses their awareness of dementia to make changes, individually and as a society.
