Does informing people about modifiable dementia risk factors lead to improved behavioral risk profiles?

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundThe Island Study Linking Ageing and Neurodegenerative Disease (ISLAND) is a large, online, prospective public health cohort study with nested interventions targeting modifiable dementia risk. The objective of ISLAND is to investigate the effectiveness of public health strategies aimed at increasing knowledge about behavioral and lifestyle factors associated with dementia, and to encourage behavior change to reduce future risk profiles at individual and population level.MethodCommencing October 2019, Tasmanian residents aged 50 and over were invited via a rolling media campaign to join ISLAND. Online surveys administered at baseline were repeated annually to enable tracking of changes in physical and mental health, social functioning, dementia risk knowledge, motivations and behaviors. After each survey wave, participants were provided a personal Dementia Risk Profile (DRP), a traffic‐light style report of their own risk level against nine domains, together with WHO recommendations for achieving ‘low risk’ status. For analyses, the DRP provides individual domain scores and a cumulative risk score, computed by summing domain scores (low = 0, medium = 0.5, high = 1). Newsletters and study information included prompts for participants to join the PD‐MOOC, a free, 4‐week online course about preventing dementia, which runs three times each year.ResultParticipants who provided full data at baseline and the October 2021 annual surveys (n = 2,935) reported a significant and moderate‐sized reduction in their cumulative DRP scores (βs = ‐.36 [95%CI ‐.40, ‐.31]. Within this sample, the participants who engaged with the PD‐MOOC (1,208, 42%) reported a small additional independent benefit (βs = ‐.08 [95%CI‐.11, ‐.05]). General knowledge about dementia risk reduction increased across all respondents (βs = .11 [95%CI .06, .15]) and amongst PD‐MOOC participants, the effect was stronger (βs = .61 [95%CI .53, .70]). The results of mediation models testing the role of knowledge and motivations in observed DRP changes will be presented.ConclusionThese preliminary findings support the core hypothesis of ISLAND, that increasing knowledge about modifiable dementia risk factors is associated with action‐taking to change key risk behaviors. Future work will link dementia‐risk knowledge and behavioral patterns over time with cognitive and blood‐based markers of neurodegeneration, to understand the long‐term effects of this online public health project.