Dissemination activities to support the uptake of sex and gender recommendations into dementia research to guide equitable interventions and policies

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of planning more equitable care, especially for vulnerable population such as persons with dementia and their care partners. Developing evidence-based and actionable recommendations that address sex and gender differences and needs, along with race, socioeconomic status, and geographical location, is paramount to equitable care. However, it is not well understood how to develop recommendations that consider sex and gender, especially when engaging persons with lived and/or clinical experience of dementia. Learning how global dementia strategies have taken sex and gender into account is the first step and leveraging our network to share with broader audiences (patients, care partners, clinicians, and healthcare managers) how we developed recommendations that consider sex and gender is the second step. To encourage a broad practice of developing sex and gender recommendations for equitable care in research, clinical practice, and health policies, we will conduct the following four activities: 1) a rapid review on how global dementia strategies have considered sex and gender; 2) infographics that present how sex and gender influence healthcare service use and satisfaction in four Canadian provinces; 3) a manuscript and national and international presentations on our approach and lesson learned on how we developed equitable recommendations for dementia care; 4) a webinar to teach how to include sex and gender in evaluation for policy and practice and in developing equitable recommendations. These activities aim to improve the consideration of sex and gender in healthcare research, to guide equitable policy and practice for persons with dementia and care partners and ultimately to ensure that men and women with dementia both receive equitable and high quality of care.