Memo #147
Featuring Weihong Song – weihong [at] exchange.ubc.ca
Alzheimer’s disease affects ten per cent of people over 65 years old, and 50 per cent of people over 85. Both China and Canada are experiencing a rapidly aging population. In China, there are 178 million people over 60.
Dr. Weihong Song’s research focuses on finding the cause of Alzheimer’s disease and developing effective ways to prevent and treat it. In 2011, he was awarded the Friendship Award, the highest award offered by the Chinese government to a foreign expert, for his contributions in forging innovative China-Canada collaborations on Alzheimer’s research and education.
Dr. Song helped establish the China-Canada Joint Health Research Initiative. Managed and funded annually by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), it has supported 89 joint research projects in the first five years. And it has just been extended for five more years.
In the interview Dr. Song describes the efforts to cure and care for Alzheimer’s patients and assesses the challenges and rewards of Sino-Canadian collaboration.
About the Author:
Weihong Song – Professor and Canada Research Chair in Alzheimer’s Disease, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, The University of British Columbia.
Part 1 – Alzheimer’s disease in Canada and China (1:52 min)
Part 2 – Receiving the Friendship Award from China (1:18 min)
Part 3 – Insights from Alzheimer’s disease research (1:23 min)
Part 4 – Future of China-Canada Joint Health Research Initiatives (0:52 min)