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Background: Awareness and in-depth knowledge about dementia within the current and future care workforce is low and needs improving. This widespread inadequate knowledge about dementia among care and key-workers is an important barrier to accessing and delivering quality care. To begin or to supplement the process of targeted dementia education, this four-UK-nation mixed method study aimed to explore the impact of playing our recently co-produced dementia inequalities board game, upon knowledge about dementia and associated inequalities, among university students, the health and social care workforce, and public sector staff. Methods: Undergraduate and postgraduate students in nursing, psychology, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, orthoptics, radiography, social work, radiotherapy and oncology across seven Universities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; plus health and social care professionals including residential care home staff in England and Scotland; and public sector staff including the police force and fire service, participated in 1-hour game play workshops playing the Dementia Inequalities Game. They completed a brief knowledge questionnaire before and after game-play. Changes in before and after workshop dementia knowledge questionnaire scores were analysed using paired samples t-tests Open-ended questions were analysed using wordcloud2 in R. Results: 750 participants played the game in 95 workshops and completed data collection. Playing the Dementia Inequalities Game significantly improved knowledge about dementia (p<.001) and dementia-related inequalities (p<.001). Conclusions: The Dementia Inequalities Game is an effective educational tool to significantly increase knowledge about dementia and dementia-related inequalities. Participation proved popular across multiple workforce sectors in health and social care, including the future workforce.
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