For brain health professionals

Brain Health Scotland has been established by the Scottish Government with the singular objective of reducing the incidence of dementia over the next 10 years. We are developing the world’s first end to end translational neuroscience environment to embed brain health research and clinical interventions within Scotland’s national health service. 

With seed funding from the Scottish Government, we run programmes across the life course to optimise and maintain brain health. These programmes will operate at both the population and the individual level. We achieve our success by establishing long-standing partnerships with organisations who share our vision of a future free from the fear of brain disease.

It is known that the diseases that lead to dementia start in midlife. The onset of these diseases is driven by many risk factors, including:

  • Fixed: such as family history and genetics
  • Modifiable: such as lifestyle, stress, obesity, and smoking
  • Comorbidities: such as diabetes and depression

Brain Health Scotland provides leadership and coordination to ensure the application of this growing evidence base is applied in clinical practice and public health campaigns. 

We conduct activities across two key areas:

Firstly, the establishment of Brain Health Services that will provide individuals with risk profiling, early disease detection and implementation of personalised prevention plans. We are actively establishing the Scottish Early Alzheimer’s Disease Detection (SEADD) Programme to provide a unique clinical setting for promoting brain health protection on a national scale. 

Secondly, we deliver a suite of public health initiatives across the life course, focussed on optimising brain health. These will include educational outreach from primary school years onwards, health promotion campaigns and management of known risk factors such as diabetes and depression. We place specific emphasis on equity of access, with a focus on addressing the needs of people living in more challenging socioeconomic circumstances.
 
Brain Health Scotland has been commissioned to produce national policy documents that will include the first Brain Health Strategy for Scotland as well as a Scottish Brain Health and Dementia Research Strategy. 

Brain Health Scotland builds on and has continued to develop the Scottish Dementia Informatics Partnership, which leads the national roll out of the Scottish Brain Health Register, and the Scottish Dementia Research Consortium, which coordinates research expertise across Scotland.
 

Get in touch

To learn more about brain health, or any of the Brain Health Scotland programmes, please get in touch at [email protected].

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