Dementia Risk Reduction Goes Beyond Lifestyle: New Australian Research Reveals Major Gaps

Australians are being told to exercise more, eat well and manage their blood pressure to reduce their dementia risk — but groundbreaking new research from Curtin University warns that this advice only tells part of the story. A study published in the peer-reviewed Lancet journal has found that social and environmental factors are being largely overlooked in dementia prevention strategies, leaving critical gaps in how the condition is understood and addressed across the population.

A Broader Picture of Dementia Risk

The research, described as the first of its kind, was led by epidemiologist Dr Jennifer Dunne, a research fellow at the Curtin University Dementia Centre of Excellence. It draws on an earlier large-scale systematic review and meta-analysis by co-author Professor Blossom Stephan — Curtin's enAble Institute Dementia chair — which identified 61 separate dementia risk factors, a significant expansion on the 14 previously recognised by the broader research community.

The new study mapped those 61 factors using a socioecological model, which examines how individual, social and environmental conditions interact. Its key finding: while individual lifestyle behaviours receive most of the attention in prevention efforts, the social and environmental conditions that shape those behaviours are poorly understood and rarely targeted.

"There's so much focus on preventing dementia, but we need to think more broadly about how we work together to prevent it," Dr Dunne said. "We need to move away from the message of telling people you need to do all these [lifestyle] things because they can only be successful if the environment around them is supportive."

Risk Factors Span an Entire Lifetime

Among the 61 identified risk factors are some that may surprise people focused purely on mid-life habits. Uncorrected vision or hearing loss, social isolation and access to quality early childhood education all feature on the list — highlighting that dementia prevention is not simply a matter of adult choices.

Dr Dunne noted that childhood education is a risk factor people simply cannot address later in life. "You start thinking about dementia prevention in mid-life … but you can't go back and do your childhood education again — you can't change that risk factor," she said. "We need to ensure that the broader society in which we live supports high-quality education that is accessible to everybody."

She also pointed to the particular vulnerability of people approaching retirement age, who can face increased social isolation as they exit the workforce. That isolation, she explained, rarely exists in a vacuum — it is deeply connected to other risk factors including hearing loss, vision loss, physical inactivity and depression.

"We know that when people sometimes become socially isolated, they become depressed. Then they tend to withdraw and stop exercising. They might start smoking, or start smoking more, which leads to a cascade of health conditions. It's all interlinked," Dr Dunne said.

The Scale of the Challenge Facing Australia

The stakes are significant. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 439,000 Australians were living with dementia in 2025, with women accounting for 56 per cent of those cases. That number is projected to surpass one million by 2065.

Dementia is an umbrella term covering more than 100 conditions, with Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia among the most common. Alzheimer's alone accounts for up to 80 per cent of all dementia cases, affecting memory, thinking and behaviour through the progressive damage or death of brain neurons. The risk rises sharply with age — more than 42 per cent of Australians aged 90 and over are living with the condition.

From Research to Real-World Action

Professor Stephan said the findings must now translate into meaningful policy and community change. "Dementia prevention should support healthy choices while also improving education, neighbourhoods, healthcare access and other social conditions that shape brain health across the population throughout a person's life," she said.

Dr Dunne described the study as a tool for identifying where future research effort and resources should be directed — a map of the evidence that already exists and, crucially, where it is still missing. With Australia's dementia burden set to grow dramatically in the coming decades, researchers are calling for a whole-of-society response that goes well beyond individual behaviour change.