The Alliance to Improve Dementia Care, part of the Milken Institute’s Center for the Future of Aging, utilizes a multi-sector approach to develop recommendations to improve care for individuals living with dementia across all stages. Building a dementia-capable workforce across the care continuum is a primary goal of the Alliance as we seek to close gaps in care through the coordination of individualized and integrated medical and social care. A dementia-capable workforce is well-trained and addresses the complex and highly variable needs of people living with dementia and their caregivers.

The Alliance aims to address workforce capacity challenges in a systematic manner, starting with amplifying solutions to improve timely detection and diagnosis. In December 2020, the Alliance hosted an expert roundtable, “Building Workforce Capacity to Improve Detection and Diagnosis of Dementia.” Leaders across industry, government, research, advocacy, philanthropy, health systems, and community-based organizations convened to examine the issues and opportunity areas to build a dementia-capable workforce.

This report captures the three major themes that emerged from our discussion: (1) promoting timely detection of cognitive impairment in primary care settings; (2) driving awareness and education of health-care professionals and consumers; and (3) broadening access and interprofessional coordination in detection, diagnosis, and care delivery.