On the 19-th February Alzheimer Bulgaria Association held a meeting with the Spanish associate professor of Psychology at the American University of Bulgaria Félix Díaz. During the meeting there was a discussion about the opportunities for collaboration between the Alzheimer Bulgaria Association and the Philosophy and Psychology Department of AUBG in which the professor is teaching.

At the end of the discussion two main objectives were formed: increasing the knowledge base of the needs of families with dementia in Bulgaria, through the application of instruments for the assessment of cognitive, linguistic and communicative competence; and extending the skills of professionals and caregivers to improve the quality of life in families with persons with dementia.

Through the following months, the Association will count with the contribution of Professor Díaz to develop training workshops with professionals and the application of assessment instruments in significant samples of families. Another field of work will be the development of specific agreements to incorporate AUBG Psychology students in academic internships and research projects with the Association, to contribute to these objectives.

Félix Díaz is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the American University of Bulgaria, where he has worked since 2018. For the last 20 years he has been involved in teaching and research related to assessment and intervention in language and communication disability, participating in academic projects in Spain, Greece and Bulgaria. Resulting from this work, he recently developed, in collaboration with other Spanish experts, the Pragmatic Evaluation Protocol (2015), and he has just published a guide on qualitative assessment techniques in speech and language therapy (2020).

Alzheimer Bulgaria Association would like to thank professor Félix Díaz for his selfless willingness to cooperate in the research on the Alzheimer disease and on the situation in Bulgaria, as well as in raising awareness especially amongst the future professionals in the social spheres.