Dr Saskia Sivananthan

Experts / Dr Saskia Sivananthan

Dr Saskia Sivananthan

Affiliate Professor, Department of Family Medicine, McGill University

An Affiliate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University, and former Chief Research & KTE Officer at the Alzheimer Society of Canada, Dr. Sivananthan is an accomplished international strategy and policy advisor on dementia care.

She oversaw a tripling of the Alzheimer Society Research program funding, a dementia research priority setting leader and the only research funder who engages people living with dementia in all aspects of research. She is co-lead for the inaugural non-pharmacological interventions working group of the Canadian Consensus Guidelines on Dementia which developed the first Canadian recommendations on psycho-social interventions for the management and treatment of dementia.

She is a neuroscientist and health data scientist who has focused her work on dementia care.

In 2020, she was appointed by the Federal Minister of Health to the ministerial advisory board on dementia. Previously, Dr. Sivananthan served as a senior strategy and policy advisor consulting for the World Health Organization (WHO) on its global dementia strategy. She co-drafted the WHO’s Global Action Plan on the Public Health Response to Dementia.

Dr. Sivananthan earned her PhD from the University of British Columbia.

Lifestyle changes can reduce dementia risk by maintaining brain plasticity

Walk 10,000 steps a day, cut back alcohol, get better sleep at night, stay socially active — we’re told that changes like these can prevent up to 40 per cent of dementia cases worldwide...

Lifestyle changes can reduce dementia risk by maintaining brain plasticity

Walk 10,000 steps a day, cut back alcohol, get better sleep at night, stay socially active — we’re told that changes like these can prevent up to 40 per cent of dementia cases worldwide...

By Dr Saskia Sivananthan, Dr Laura Middleton

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Neurology