Media Advisory: Can music ease dementia? UB hosts screening of award-winning documentary

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo will host a screening of the award-winning documentary “Alive Inside,” followed by a panel discussion, both dealing with how music benefits cognition in the elderly on Friday, April 10.

Free and open to the public, the event runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the North Park Theatre, 1428 Hertel Avenue, Buffalo. Information about community resources will be available from 9 a.m. to 10 am. The movie will be shown from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., followed by an intermission and the panel discussion.

The event is part of the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions’ (SPHHP) celebration of National Public Health Week.

Media are invited. For press arrangements, please contact Ellen Goldbaum at 716-645-4605.

The documentary, created by the organization Music & Memory, highlights how music can help older adults who suffer from some form of cognitive decline, from  mild forgetfulness to severe forms of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Called an “uplifting cinematic exploration of music and the mind,” the film won the 2014 Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award.

The event also is intended to recognize and promote interprofessional collaboration among disciplines that work with older adults and their families to prevent and compensate for cognitive decline.

Mayor Byron Brown will proclaim April as Occupational Therapy month, in response to a request from a student in the SPHHP’s Department of Rehabilitation Science.

The idea for the event came from UB’s occupational therapy students, who knew about the film and wanted to screen it in Buffalo. It is being presented by the Occupational Therapy National Honor Society (Pi Theta Epsilon, Tau Chapter), Student Occupational Therapy Association (SOTA), School of Social Work Graduate Student Association (GSA) and Physical Therapy Club.  The event is being sponsored by the UB Office of Interprofessional Education and the UB Graduate Student Association.

“Occupational therapists, physical therapists, and social workers are just a few of the disciplines that work together with those that suffer from various stages of cognitive decline,” says Paul Wietig, EdD, assistant vice president in the Office of Interprofessional Education in the SPHHP. “Our mission in IPE is to offer educational and/or training experiences that help break down the traditional ‘silos’ that keep health care professionals functioning only within their respective disciplines. This is a great example of these students coming together and recognizing the sum is greater than the individual parts.”

For more details about the “Alive Inside” screening or the school’s other National Public Health Week events, please visit: www.sphhp.buffalo.edu/nphw.