Advancing Australian public health initiatives targeting dementia risk reduction

Abstract

Public health initiatives aim to improve health outcomes for populations by preventing disease and ill-health consequences of environmental hazards and natural or human-made disasters. Whilst public health initiatives have been used successfully to modify behaviours for chronic diseases, many initiatives targeting reduced dementia risk in older adults suffer from conceptual and statistical flaws that greatly limit their usefulness. The limited success in modifying lifestyle dementia risk factors has led us to fall short in building a successful roadmap to dementia risk reduction. Here we argue for adopting a population-level, holistic approach to dementia risk reduction strategies across the lifespan. This approach is supplemented by 10 strategies that focus on improving social policies, harnessing existing policy, legislature and incentive schemes, and identifying feasible approaches to increase recreational and transport-related physical activity to creating best practice health care that supports healthy brain ageing for all.

Keywords: Health policy; dementia; geriatrics; health services; public health.