A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of community and population interventions to reduce the modifiable risk factors for dementia

Abstract

Population-based health and lifestyle interventions, which change societal conditions such that everyone across a given community is more likely to live more healthily, have been under-researched within the context of dementia prevention and risk reduction. This systematic review finds such interventions highly cost-effective, and often also cost-saving, in both high- as well as low- and middle-income settings. The strongest evidence base was for interventions that changed the physical environment to decrease physical inactivity or obesity, financial interventions that improved access to or resources for education, and mass media programmes that changed the social environment around smoking.