To mark Dementia Action Week (18–24 May 2026), Boots is funding new research with the University of Nottingham to explore how Memory Boxes could support everyday dementia care, and the potential for the initiative to be scaled as a social prescribing tool.
The research builds on Boots' Memory Box initiative launched for Dementia Action Week 2025, when the retailer distributed over 1,000 boxes to care homes and carers across the UK. The boxes, inspired by Boots' heritage in health and beauty, highlighted how familiar objects and sensory cues, from the scent of lavender bath salts or coal tar soap, the prickle of hair rollers or the click of a powder compact, can help stimulate memory recall and support meaningful moments of connection for people living with dementia.
Building on early learnings from academic work on sensory simulation and reminiscence, Boots is now taking the initiative a step further with the University of Nottingham.
Professor Tracey Thornley, Professor of Health Policy co-leads the research with Professor Svenja Adolphs, Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Nottingham. Professor Thornley said: "Too often we think of care only in terms of medicines, yet some of the most powerful 'nudges' for health and wellbeing are social, sensory and relational. Community pharmacists already play a vital role beyond dispensing, supporting people and families to manage long‑term conditions in everyday life.
This research explores how tools like Memory Boxes can sit alongside medicines as a form of social prescribing, strengthening connection and quality of life for people living with dementia. We use innovative linguistics research into the stories people tell us about their engagement with memory boxes which helps us to understand different perspectives of the challenges and opportunities around scale up and implementation of this initiative.
Over an eight-month programme, the evaluation will gather perspectives from people living with dementia, families and carers, care‑home teams and healthcare professionals, including pharmacists to understand benefits, enablers and barriers to wider roll‑out. It will consider how multi‑sensory, place‑based Memory Boxes can help people living with dementia feel more connected to their communities, and what is needed to operationalise and integrate the approach into existing pathways.
Memories help us hold on to who we are and how we've lived our lives, and sometimes all it takes is a familiar object, a scent or a sound from times gone by to open up an important conversation. Boots has been a constant in the UK for generations, so we created Boots Memory Boxes to make it easier for people living with dementia, their families and carers to share those moments together, feel included and reconnect through shared experiences.
One in two of us will be affected by dementia in our lifetime, either as a carer or directly affected, so Boots is committed to supporting healthier communities and helping families access practical, compassionate tools that encourage connection and inclusion.
This follows Boots' long-standing history of helping those living with dementia. It has supported Alzheimer's Society since 2017, during which time over 15,400 colleagues have become Dementia Friends. Dementia Friends can help make the shopping experience easier for those impacted by the early stages of dementia as well as offering them, their families and friends information advice, support and understanding when it's needed.
