collaboration between the adult- and childhood dementia communities? The ceo of childhood dementia initiative has been pleasantly surprised

​Australian native Megan Maack is the mother of 2 children with Sanfilippo Syndrome. She's also the CEO and founder of Childhood Dementia Initiative (CDI), an organization launched in 2020 that focuses on representing childhood dementia as a collective - rather than 70+ separate/isolated genetic disorders - to help drive therapeutic innovation and ultimately improve the outcomes for children with dementia across the world. 

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​During our conversation with Megan earlier this year, we asked her about collaboration efforts (if any) that currently exist between the adult- and childhood dementia communities.  She said that she's very pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement and support that she and her organization have received so far from the adult-onset community - particularly from Dementia Australia, which is one of Australia's largest adult-dementia organizations representing the 400,000+ Australians living with dementia.  Megan pointed out that even though the underlying root causes for adult- and childhood dementia are generally quite different and unique (for a myriad of reasons), there is undeniably plenty of opportunity for collaboration and joint advocacy across the dementia communities in the years ahead - and those collaboration efforts are now firmly underway. 
Furthermore, because all types of dementia - both adult- and childhood - ultimately target the brain, there's a high likelihood that any therapeutic solutions or even delivery mechanisms that demonstrates success or advancement for one type of dementia will have crossover scientific benefits for many other types of dementia as well. Click below for the 2-minute clip.

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I've actually been overwhelmingly supported by the adult dementia community"