January 2024 - A new year, more community presentations, International Lewy Body Dementia Day, and more...

Hello Lewy Warriors!

Welcome to a new year! We hope that everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve and remainder of your holiday season. We're moving into 2024 with lots of plans and are so excited to get back out in our community. Before we get in to that, though, we wanted to share some great news. We've heard from our liaison at UWO and are pleased to share that we are now at $67,167 in total donations! Wow! We thank everyone who donated over the holidays. As always, we could not do this without your help.

This past Sunday, Jan. 28th, we celebrated the inaugural World Lewy Body Dementia Day. Spearheaded by Lewy Body International, it is a day for raising awareness about the disease and advocating for Lewy Body Dementia patients, carers, and medical professionals. LBD is growing worldwide and statistics show that the numbers are likely to continue to rise. This requires education, advocacy, and fundraising to generate and allocate resources for and spread awareness about this disease. World Lewy Body Dementia Day is meant to do just that.

As Timothy Hudson of Lewy.ca states, “There is a clear and present danger to individuals, families and the community, as well as an immeasurable burden put on public health staff and resources as a result of this condition. World Lewy Body Day is a significant step forward to show the need to apply resources to this pressing issue and will make a profound difference to society.”

Want to learn more? Click here: https://lewybodyint.org/

We also had our first community presentation of 2024 this past month at the Terrace On The Square retirement home. We had a lovely time meeting and speaking with the staff and residents about Lewy Body Dementia. We wanted to thank them for having us out and we're so excited to do more all over the region in the coming months. In fact, our next presentation is this Sunday at Christ Lutheran Church in Waterloo. In March, we're hosting our own private event and speaking at the Clay & Glass Museum in Waterloo. Speaking of community events, we have also started planning our "CLBDI Community Walks" and are hoping to be walking all across Ontario this year. Do you want to have us out to speak about LBD in your workplace? Send us an email. We're open for booking for the rest of the year and would love to come out.

In case you missed it, we also released the second episode of the "CLBDI Talks" interview series in December. This episode features Natalia Busch RN and covers long-term care, Sunnyside Home, and the Butterfly Approach to caretaking. If you haven't already, you can watch it below. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube to get notified when we drop our next episode in February.

On the topic of advocacy, we plan on releasing our advocacy letter templates, which will be available to everyone for free on our website, in the coming weeks. We're working with our advisory board to deliver the best possible templates that cover a wide range of topics including medical research advocacy, caretaker and patient advocacy, and the effect LBD and other dementias will soon have on society as a whole. We'll also be mailing some out to our local MPs and MPPs to start the conversation about the future of LBD and dementia in Ontario. More information will be available soon but we're excited to offer you a springboard for your own LBD advocacy, wherever you're located in Canada.

As usual, we have added more resources and links to our "LBD Resources" page and continue to grow our connections within the LBD community. Be sure to go and check it out when you have a moment. Want to stay more connected to our daily updates? Follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/CanadianLBDInfo/)! We've got lots planned for the new year and can't wait to share more with you in the coming months. Wishing you all the best in February.

Best,
Joe