Project Overview

The BRAID Hub (Brain health Resources And Integrated Diversity Hub) addresses critical gaps in Canada’s dementia care system. Focused on building a skilled workforce, it aims to provide holistic support for older adults at risk of cognitive impairment and living with dementia, prioritizing quality of life and diversity.

The National Dementia Strategy emphasizes evidence-based, culturally appropriate guidelines. The BRAID Hub adopts an agile Knowledge Translation and Exchange strategy co-designed with users, ensuring flexibility in information access preferences.

The Hub’s centralized platform, collaborating with several partners’ learning management systems, provides evidence-based education and resources across the dementia continuum. Healthcare professionals (family physicians, nurses and social workers) are the primary audience, but the Hub also targets individuals at risk of or living with dementia, emphasizing ethnically diverse and underserved communities.

An Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) lens permeates all resources. Existing guidelines will be mobilized through the Hub, translating them into accessible courses, tools, guides, and training pathways. The BRAID Hub’s development cycle adheres to adult learning and codesign principles. Diverse working groups ensure representative perspectives. A multifaceted knowledge mobilization approach, using both push and pull mechanisms, includes webinars, online resources, workshops and partnerships.

Commitment to EDI involves engagement with diverse communities and people with lived experience ground the hub in person-centered, quality-of-life principles. Collaboration extends to universities, with McMaster, McGill, and the University of Calgary leading. Each university’s expertise contributes to major topic areas, ensuring a national coalition for deploying the Hub. In essence, the BRAID Hub represents a comprehensive, collaborative, and culturally competent approach to transforming dementia care in Canada.

Principal Investigator

Parminder Raina , McMaster University

Partners and Donors

Azrieli Foundation Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)