EBC’s Year of the Brain campaign ran through the academic year 2014-2015, with the vision‘To protect, preserve, develop and nurture our most vital asset: The Brain’ via three key aims:

  1. To educate society about how to nurture and protect the brain and prevent brain disease.
  2. To improve care and treatment access for those affected by brain disease.
  3.  To increase investment in brain-related R&D for the benefit of future generations.

The Year of the Brain (YotB) worked to raise awareness of the importance of the Brain and spread the key messages across Europe with 60 “Year of the Brain”-branded events and 11 key, high profile events. Furthermore, YotB President, Mary Baker, delivered 21 YotB presentations. This generated some great press coverage including articles in the Times and the G20 Summit publication. YotB featured 80 high profile Ambassadors who supported the project – details listed here.

National Brain Councils (NBCs) and National Action Groups (NAGs) were also supported to run Year of the Brain activities, including two big events in 2014 organised by the Belgian Brain Council and the Bulgarian Brain Council. The campaign was concluded in 2015 with a multi-stakeholder conference titled ‘Lifting the Dark Clouds: What can Europe do to Reduce the Burden of Depression in the Workplace’.