Brain Awareness Week 2024 finds new support thanks to Angelini Pharma
Angelini Pharma is glad to participate in the Brain Awareness Week, starting today, March 11 and lasting until March 17. This week was originally created by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives in 1995 to raise public awareness about the advancements and benefits of brain research and has evolved to include more ambitious goals.
At European level, the campaign now aims to promote and communicate brain health and the ongoing efforts to prevent and treat brain disorders. Moreover, the goal is also to gain attention of EU policymakers to increase resources for prevention, awareness, and research.
Angelini Pharma is strongly committed to Brain Health, which is critical to taking care of an individual as a whole. This year, the company is participating in Brain Awareness Week for the first time, collaborating with strategic partners like the Society for Neuroscience, the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, and the European Brain Council.
A week's worth of initiatives for Angelini Pharma
The first event that Angelini Pharma proudly participated in was the European Brain Council's event No health without Brain Health on March 7, featuring notable speakers from scientific and patients’ community advocating for crucial initiatives, funding for research and more public awareness.
No Health without Brain Health was held at the European Parliament in Brussels, bringing together stakeholders, including clinicians, researchers, patients, and additional MEPs and civil servants. Angelini Pharma’s contribution to the debate focused on Brain Health as a global health priority, the burden of brain-health-related diseases and the correlation between neurological and psychiatric conditions. Finally, the Headway initiative was showcased.
The event featured a speech by Elena Alvarez, Global Medical Affairs Director at Angelini Pharma, and Elisa Milani, Senior Consultant and Headway Project Coordinator at the Think Tank The European House Ambrosetti, the long-standing partner of Angelini Pharma on the Headway initiative. Milani and Alvarez's speech, Towards a new roadmap in Brain and Mental Health, showcased the project, which aims at reducing the burden of Mental Health disorders and Epilepsy in Europe with a comprehensive approach to monitor countries’ responsiveness, assessing trends over time, and comparing healthcare systems to get a dynamic and comprehensive picture of brain health disorders effects on society.
The ultimate goal of this engagement is to urge more policy advocacy of brain health research in the European Union: for the relevance of the burden of brain-health-related diseases, brain health should be prioritized as a global high-level priority for public health. Working towards such goal means reducing mortality, stigma, and obstacles in everyone’s daily life, improving quality of life, and enabling change for patient community, since one in three people in the European Union likely to develop a brain disorder at a certain point in their lives and being mental health disorders, the 2nd most disabling Non-Communicable Disease (NCDs) in terms of burden.
Angelini Pharma will also be present at Wired Health, the health event held by Wired Magazine on March 13, in Milan. The selected theme for this significant Italian event is "Mental Health and New Technologies."
The company will be represented by Michela Procaccini, Italy Medical Director of Angelini Pharma, who will discuss patient-centricity in patient support programs developed in Italy by Angelini Pharma to support patients and their network.
Additional resources are available so that no information from this week is lost.
The first is the Euractiv opinion editorial bylined by Rafal Kaminski, Chief Scientific Officer at Angelini Pharma, published today to celebrate Brain Awareness Week and to strengthen the importance of prioritizing Brain Health at the forefront of public health agenda.
The GAMIAN-Europe's Interactive E-Book on Brain and Mental Health will also be available soon: this project provides comprehensive and engaging information about the brain and its connection to mental. Additionally, it also showcases personal stories, a debunking myths section, and nutritional advice.
Prioritizing brain health with increased attention, resources, and dedicated spaces, both within the medical field and in policy panels, is an invaluable goal for our whole community. As this topic intersects with a variety of daily life aspects and public health, Angelini Pharma strongly advocates for joining a pioneering multi-stakeholder approach, one that can equally consider the clinical and societal implications of brain health diseases.
With its contribution to Brain Awareness Week, Angelini Pharma hopes to foster more debate and inspire good practice and mindful investments in a topic that concerns us all as a community.