Good sleep quantity and quality is vital for healthy ageing and optimal cognitive functioning. Individuals with poor sleep have an increased risk of at least a 1.5 times of developing dementia.

Care partners, who are pivotal in assisting people facing these issues, are often overlooked. They are instrumental in providing support for over 90% of community-dwelling individuals with cognitive decline. However, two-thirds of care partners experience recurrent sleep disturbances themselves, some getting just 4.4 hours of sleep a night.

To address this, a 6-week sleep intervention (the Better Sleep for Wellbeing Program), supported by Dementia Australia, was developed & tested, for community-dwelling carepartners of people living with dementia.

Joshua’s research stems from engagement feedback within the community that:

(i) sleep support available as a toolkit, preferably in a digital format, which will help them pick and choose strategies that are most relevant to their context.

(ii) assistance from sleep coaches to implement strategies, troubleshoot issues, ensure motivation and psychological support.

His research goals are to expand the availability of this intervention in a scalable, accessible, low-cost format, ensuring future dementia support has an immediate, scalable, and effective platform to significantly enhance their support offerings for people living with dementia, care partners & even clinicians.