Yesterday the Alzheimer’s Society announced another major investment in research to improve quality of life and the quality of support available to people affected by dementia, funding three new research programmes with £2m each over the next five years. Professor Rusted is co-investigator on one of these projects, a collaboration between  Professor Linda Clare at Exeter University and the universities of Sussex, Cardiff, Brunel, Bangor and Newcastle with King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the RICE centre in Bath and Innovations in Dementia CIC, focusing on ways to measure and improve quality of life for people affected by dementia. The grant will fund a second phase of the group’s large-scale national study entitled Improving the Experience of Dementia and Enhancing an Active Life (IDEAL), which, since 2014, has been gathering an extensive database of information from over 1500 people with dementia and 1300 carers, using questionnaires and interviews to understand the experiences of people with dementia as they move through from diagnosis to the later stages.  The expansion of the study allows us to follow this large and diverse cohort over six years of progression, including the less-researched experiences of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and people in the advanced stages of dementia. At the end of the study we will use our findings to set out guidelines for how to help people affected by dementia to have the best possible quality of life.