The Nottingham Consensus on dementia risk reduction policy published
The Nottingham Consensus on dementia risk reduction policy has been published in Nature Reviews Neurology.
Work on the paper was led by researchers at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Dementia and Neurodegeneration at Queen Mary University of London (DeNPRU-QM), with a national panel of experts contributing to the findings. It sets out 56 evidence-based recommendations for dementia prevention, public health, and tackling health inequalities. The recommendations span four policy areas:
- Reforming public messaging to improve awareness of brain health and dementia risk among the public.
- Identifying and treating individual risk factors for dementia, such as hearing loss and high blood pressure.
- Addressing the important structural factors influencing brain health that are outside an individual’s control (such as socioeconomic deprivation and air pollution).
- Targeting research funding to address gaps in understanding of how best to reduce dementia risk.
Senior author Charles Marshall, Professor of Clinical Neurology at Queen Mary University of London, says:
“Dementia is now the leading cause of death in the UK, so we desperately need a clear public health plan to improve this situation. We hope that this consensus will lead to better public messaging about dementia, improved recognition and management of other conditions that increase dementia risk, a strategy on structural approaches to improving brain health, and research that addresses gaps in our knowledge about how best to do all this. Implementing our recommendations will ensure that as many people as possible live to old age without dementia.”
Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41582-025-01173-9