Dementia, public health and public policy – making the connections

Public health and dementia have, until recently, rarely been found sharing the same bed either in academic journals or in public policy discourse. This partly reflects the low profile that dementia has had in policy debates but even when it has fallen under the spotlight, the focus has been on it as a neurological condition and the priority has been to find effective treatments or cure.

In the last ten years, however, the landscape has changed significantly and the profile of dementia has risen dramatically in policy, research and practice terms. Although the link with public health is still relatively...