The Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Health Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health

The Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Health Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health is a call to action and a guide to assist in implementing a coordinated approach to moving cognitive health into public health practice. The road map was written to bring together multiple partners, agencies, and organizations. It was developed in a year-long process following a research meeting about “The Healthy Brain and Our Aging Population: Translating Science into Public Health Practice,” in May 2006. The developmental process involved partners at the national, state, and local levels including the Alzheimer’s Association, National Institutes of Health, Administration on Aging, AARP, National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, the Healthy Aging Research Network of the Prevention Research Centers, and many others. The priority actions are grounded in the current state of the science, emphasize primary prevention, and are focused on community and population health. The priority actions were developed and reviewed by more than 150 experts across various disciplines and organizations.

The Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Health Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health was released on June 10th, 2007, at the International Prevention of Dementia Conference in Washington, DC.

The CDC Healthy Brain Initiative Progress 2006-2011 report documents CDC’s Healthy Brain Initiative’s accomplishments during the past five years focusing on priorities relevant to CDC’s public health mission in four areas: conducting surveillance, supporting policy change, advancing communication, and guiding applied prevention research.

• Full Report [PDF–1.5Mb]
• Report Summary [PDF–857Kb]