Can Community-based Interventions from Other Key National Health Priority Areas Inform Strategies to Reduce the Risk of Dementia?

Objective In 2006,Alzheimer's Association Victoria Australia funded the authors to conduct a systematic review of the community education literature in order to assist the development of their own community education strategy.Methods This paper draws upon this research project to convey the predominant messages arising consistently across the evidence base relating to key national health priority areas.Particular attention is given to exploring the needs of minority groups.Results The evidence reviewed indicates the need for multi-faceted intervention approaches that are carefully planned and assessed to ensure sufficient exposure of the target audience to the health messages.Conclusion Such approaches remain to be empirically tested within the context of dementia risk reduction.Nevertheless,there are consistent models in the evidence base that can be applied with confidence to community education in the current domain.