Co-creating dementia knowledge and action in Ghana: Evidence from a participatory stakeholder workshop.

Background: Knowledge confined within academic or clinical silos has limited utility to influence policy. To bridge the gap between evidence and action, a participatory, co-creation workshop was convened of persons living with dementia, family carers, healthcare professionals, policy actors, spiritual or faith-based leaders, and community advocates in a collective process of dialogue, reflection, and solution design. Objectives: The research aimed to determine whether stakeholders' knowledge and attitudes towards dementia improved following the workshop. Methods: Data were drawn from a multi-method assessment from a participatory research dissemination and co-creation workshop held in Kumasi, Ghana. A non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test was selected as the primary analytical tool for the pre-post-test. A reflexive thematic analysis was implemented for the qualitative data. Results: Following the workshop, participants reported feeling significantly more informed about dementia prevalence in Ghana ( Conclusion: There is a need to formalise and resource a community of practice, thus ensuring sustained collaboration, structured knowledge exchange, collective action across sectors, whilst piloting a caregiver support programme and home-care model with rigorous monitoring and evaluation. It is time for policymakers to enact a comprehensive dementia care policy to guide and regulate all stakeholders in the continuum of dementia care.