The critical role of clinical champions: Commentary on "establishing and sustaining high quality services for people with young onset dementia: The perspective of senior service providers and commissioners"

Delivery of high-quality and age-appropriate care for the estimated 3.9 million people living with young onset dementia (YOD; with symptom onset prior to 65 years of age) (Hendriks et al., 2021) is a global challenge. In YOD, symptom onset occurs “off-time” and earlier than is expected in the population. As such, most dementia care is designed for older people and is integrated into existing elder and/or health care systems (Draper and Withall, 2016). It is well established that specialized services designed for and delivered to meet the unique experience of
YOD are most effective and preferred by people with YOD. For example, Stamou, La Fontaine, Gage, et al. (2021) identified that specialized YOD services performed better on all indicators of care quality than other care providers (e.g. general practitioners). People with YOD and their families consistently report a preference for services designed with their unique needs in mind (Bannon et al.,
2022; Carter et al., 2018; Cations et al., 2022; Mayrhofer et al., 2018). Indeed, many people with YOD and their families choose not to access a dementia service recommended to them because of concerns about the service being able to meet their needs (Cations et al., 2017).