A few weeks ago, I attended the yearly Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease Conference in Copenhagen and came back with three things: optimism, urgency, and a deeper sense of why the work of the Global BHP BrainTrust is so important.

The field of neurodegeneration is undergoing a quiet mindset change. We are no longer asking only how to treat neurodegeneration, we’re asking how to prevent it and how to find the people who carry the silent disease in their brains years before a single symptom appears.

Estimates from AD/PD suggest that roughly one in thirteen Americans between the ages of 55 and 79 already carry this pathology without knowing it. Imagine the total worldwide!

Whilst science is moving forward toward prevention, a step-change is needed to correct the underrepresentation of women within programme design and clinical cohorts. Nearly two-thirds of all Alzheimer’s patients are women and they progress faster and are diagnosed later. So, this is where and why I feel the urgency most acutely.

So the question is not only what is changing in the field of neurodegeneration, but whether these changes and advances also reach women on equal terms. That is precisely why the Global BHP BrainTrust exists.