Are Population-Level Approaches to Dementia Risk Reduction UnderResearched? A Rapid Review of the Dementia Prevention Literature

Abstract

Dementia is forecast to become increasingly prevalent, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and is associated with high human and economic costs. Primary prevention of dementia -preventing risk factors leading to disease development - is an emerging global public health priority. Primary prevention can be achieved in two ways: individual-level or population-level. In this rapid review, we quantify the proportion of contributing interventional evidence to the dementia primary prevention literature that is concerned with either approach. We searched Medline, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Cochrane, the World Health Organization, and Google to identify systematic reviews that described primary prevention interventions for dementia. We used search terms related to dementia risk reduction, intervention/policy, and review. We analysed reference lists of included dementia prevention reviews to identify contributing primary prevention evidence, and categorised these as either individual-level or population-level. Additionally, we examined search strategies to investigate the likelihood of reviews identifying available population-level interventions. We included twelve of the 527 articles retrieved. Population-level evidence was summarised by only two reviews. In these two reviews,