Walter Dawson, DPhil, is a lifelong advocate for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and their care partners. At ten years old, he was invited to testify before a Congressional Committee about his family’s experiences caring for his father in rural Oregon who was living with Alzheimer’s and the need to build a more equitable health system. He remains one of the youngest persons to ever testify before the U.S. Congress.
Dawson holds an appointment at PSU’s Institute on Aging, where he is the primary investigator (PI) for the evaluation of Oregon’s Behavioral Health Initiative for Older Adults and People with Physical Disabilities, the Oregon Center of Excellence in Behavioral Health in Aging, and the development of Behavioral Health Training Modules for Aging Service Agencies. He also holds a position as an Assistant Professor at the Layton Aging and Alzheimer's Disease Center at the OHSU School of Medicine and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health with the Global Brain Health Institute with the University of California, San Francisco and Trinity College Dublin Ireland. His research focuses on the intersection between macro-level health policy and health services research focused on supporting individuals living with dementia from underserved populations. Dawson’s research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s Association, and the Atlantic Institute. As a Fulbright Scholar, Dawson explored the development and design of long-term care policies in Canada. He is the co-lead of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Brain Health Diplomacy Working Group, which seeks county and global-level commitments to advance brain-based policies and investments.
Dawson also has extensive experience in U.S. state and national policy. As staff at the US Senate Special Committee on Aging, he worked on provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) focused on increasing access to home and community-based services (HCBS) for older adults and people living with disabilities. More recently, Dawson was appointed to the Oregon Governor’s Commission on Senior Services and currently serves as the chair of the Commission. Dawson received his doctorate in social policy from the University of Oxford and holds a master's from the London School of Economics.