Blog – Dementia Researcher, Bringing Communities Together

Last month Dementia Researcher announced plans to deliver a new Community App, and over the next few weeks, we will sharing information in preparation for its launch in April.

If you’re playing catch-up, let me recap. When we launched Dementia Researcher, we always envisaged that it would provide a vibrant community space where researchers could interact with each other, share stories, tips and provide peer support. We have achieved our aim, but as we’ve expanded and now reach an even wider international audience, we think we can do even better.

Our new app will be an independent, exclusive, and safe space, where researchers can feel a sense of belonging and interact with the wider research community – at all career stages, and working in all areas of discovery.

It will deliver all the functionality you expect from the mainstream social media platforms (imagine the best bits of X, Facebook and Instagram), but just for dementia researchers. It will also be a place where we, and our partners, can deliver community training, events, livestreams, dedicated groups, journal clubs, online mentoring and much more.

It’s that last feature that I want to talk about in this blog (sorry for taking so long to get to the point). Because this isn’t going to be the Dementia Researcher Community App, it will actually be the Dementia Researcher Communities App. Not just a place for researchers who use our services, but a place that research community leaders and organisers can freely use to provide a space for their own common interest groups to communicate, share information, and collaborate on specific topics or goals (similar to Facebook Groups).

How it will work

Creation and Membership: Any Researcher can apply to have their own group and decide whether it’s open (anyone can join), closed (membership requires approval), or secret (invisible to non-members). Dementia Researcher will appoint you as administrator / moderators for that group, and  help manage the group.

Here are some examples of groups who have already signed-up:

• A 2024 Doctoral Training Programme Group – 25 PhD Students working across 5 Universities who want a safe space to connect and support each other and collaborate. They will also deliver monthly webinars via the group, and hold a journal club each month (this will be a Private Group).
• NIHR Dem Comm Fellowship Programme – 50+ Research Fellows working at Universities across the England who want a space to connect and keep each other up to date with their work – and allowing the leadership to quickly reach each other.
• Study Working Group – A group of researchers who are working on a co-production project, who want a space to share ideas and discuss their progress.
• Clinical Trials Group – A community to bring people together to talk about their work on the delivery of clinical trials. This will support sharing best practice, and opportunities for others to get involved in trial delivery.

These Community driven groups will sit alongside those created and run by Dementia Researcher which will be themed around research topics and career issues.

Communication Tools: Within a group, members can post updates, share photos and videos, ask questions, and create polls. Groups also support the creation of events, live video broadcasting, and file sharing, facilitating rich interactions among members.

Notification Settings: Members can customise their notification settings to stay updated on group activities, choosing to receive alerts for all posts, highlights, or only posts from friends.

Privacy Settings: The group’s privacy setting determines who can find the group, see its members, and view its posts. Administrators can change these settings, but some restrictions apply, especially for larger groups.

Benefits of Dementia Researcher Communities Groups

Community Building: We know that there are a 101 different ways for researchers to stay connected with their colleagues and communities. From email mailing lists and MS Teams Chats to Slack and  WhatsApp. What we hope will make this different is the idea of brining this all into one place. An app that allows you to be in one group with your colleagues talking about your research, and at the same time another group that helps you study, or another talks about meeting at a conference – and the big difference? Well this is free, and you don’t need to worry about set-up.

Here is another example. We’ve been talking to a researcher who has a website, and regularly runs online events for other researchers, they also chat on social media. What they don’t have is any actual connection to the people they hope to support – just a mailing list. However, when we launch they’ll be able to share a private joining link to bring their community together in the Dementia Researcher Communities App. Brining them together to connect and share their knowledge, experiences, and resources.

Its all about Networking: Professional groups allow for networking opportunities between:

• Groups of people working on specific research projects
• Cohorts of students
• Common interest groups
• People working together but based in separate locations
• And any other reason you can think of… maybe you just want to support and work with others like you…

Final thoughts

Chat Forums were brilliant in the 00’s, but we’ve moved on In summary, Dementia Researchers Community Groups will be a versatile tool that facilitates community building, information sharing, and collaboration on the internet. We hope they’ll offer a way to connect with like-minded individuals or engage with a your audience, to providing a sense of belonging and a space for meaningful interactions online.

We could do this alone, but we realise that bringing communities together, unified in their aim but with their own identities will make us all that bit stronger.

Adam Smith

Author

Adam Smith was born in the north, a long time ago. He wanted to write books, but ended up working in the NHS, and at the Department of Health.  He is now Programme Director at University College London (which probably sounds more important than it is – his words). He has led a number of initiatives to improve dementia research (including this website, Join Dementia Research & ENRICH), as well as pursuing his own research interests. In his spare time, he grows vegetables, builds Lego, likes rockets & spends most of his time drinking too much coffee and squeezing technology into his house.

Follow @betterresearch