A new perspective article, published in BMC Global and Public Health, argues that this individual-centred approach is no longer sufficient on its own. The authors, a large international group led by Timothy Daly and Carole Dufouil, call for a fundamentally different orientation, one they name public brain health: intersectoral action to establish brain health priorities, empower communities and reduce health inequities, with the ultimate goal of improving brain health at the population level across the lifetime. Their argument rests on two converging pressures, the growing global burden of neurological conditions and a deepening appreciation of the brain’s central role in every facet of human life, from childhood classrooms to ageing workplaces.
The vision the authors sketch is captured in the phrase “brain health for all”, a society in which population-level strategies benefit everyone rather than only those who can access specialist care. The framework they propose has three key elements. The first is co-defining priorities with communities, so that the people affected by brain health challenges help decide what counts as a priority in the first place. The second is balancing prevention strategies, ensuring that attention to one set of risks does not crowd out others. The third is reducing global gaps in brain health through ambitious policy-making, an explicit acknowledgement that the burden of neurological and cognitive impairment falls unevenly across regions and that closing those gaps requires political action rather than clinical innovation alone.
Underlying the framework is a claim about responsibility. Public brain health, the authors write, calls for collective responsibility to maximise brain health equity across the life course. That framing deliberately shifts brain health out of the neurology clinic and into domains that rarely describe themselves as brain-related: education, urban planning, law and administration, social services and economic policy. The article argues that effective advocacy must mobilise cross-sector action, ensuring that investments in prevention, care and research generate measurable improvements in health equity and long-term social and economic stability. In the authors’ account, brain health is a necessary condition of sustainable development, and advocacy must therefore move beyond disease-focused campaigns towards comprehensive narratives encompassing homes, schools and workplaces.
The perspective also situates brain health within broader policy agendas. The authors note that public brain health aligns with a “One Health” ethos, which emphasises the interdependence between the health of people, animals and ecosystems. They argue that brain health has great potential for integration into the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, for example through action against non-communicable diseases, whose goals cannot be achieved without brain health, and vice versa. The vision they describe considers people with thriving brains working together as the foundation of thriving, sustainable societies, a formulation that transforms brain health from an individual concern into a shared societal priority for the benefit of all people and the planet.
Importantly, the authors insist that this is not merely an idealistic exercise. In their conclusions they state that the core components of public brain health, working with communities to empower them and reduce health inequalities, can be implemented even on a small scale. What is required, they caution, is intersectoral traction to achieve improvements in population-level brain health. They point to signs of momentum: policymakers increasingly recognise brain health as central to societal wellbeing, as evidenced by growing attention at forums such as the World Economic Forum in July 2025 and the Brain Health at the Science Summit of the 80th United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. Just as “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain” has moved from a fringe concept to mainstream wisdom, the authors observe an emerging consensus that what is good for the brain is good for society, provided that new intersectoral action is thoughtfully articulated alongside existing initiatives.
The article is candid about how much conceptual work remains. In a review of different definitions of brain health, drawing on existing literature reviews and on definitions used by leading public health initiatives and professional and patient associations, the authors report two major findings. First, the definition of brain health has not reached full consensus and still requires further refinement, particularly regarding the concept of mental health; brain health, they argue, transcends disciplines and requires their integration. Second, and perhaps more striking, no definition they found explicitly involved interest holders from broader society. This absence is precisely what public brain health is designed to correct: rather than defining brain health for communities, the framework argues in favour of working alongside communities to establish priorities and take action.
To illustrate both the promise and the difficulty of translating research into effective policy, the authors devote sustained attention to Latin America, a region they describe as known for its rich cultural diversity but also for persistent inequalities stemming from its colonial past. Those inequalities translate into major disparities in life expectancy across cities in the region, with important repercussions for brain health. Researchers from across the region are developing new methodologies to build the evidence base for the impact of the exposome, defined as the sum of lifetime exposures to environmental sources of risk and protective factors, on brain health. In particular, recent landmark studies have used deep learning techniques to develop algorithmic biomarkers of brain health gaps in populations exposed to poverty, pollution and reduced access to healthcare, and in places where indices of political instability are high.
The regional picture the authors paint is one of accumulating evidence meeting stubborn institutional barriers. Countries such as Colombia have been exposed to significant trauma caused by decades of civil war and tensions, leading to crises of despair. Despite a growing evidence base for brain health inequalities that could be reduced by reasonable means, it is notoriously difficult to change health policy. In Chile, the authors note, public policy is fragmented: while national dementia policy has allowed for significant advances in diagnostics and treatment for dementia, prevention and continuity of care, research and capacity building have not progressed sufficiently, leading to limited support for those living with dementia now and in the future. Nevertheless, they identify examples of successful initiatives to guide future efforts, including research across the region on multi-domain interventions for primary prevention of dementia through the LatAm FINGERS initiative, and the example of neurorights, protections against the harmful uses of neurotechnology that have been written into the Chilean constitution and could be expanded to include protections relevant to brain health. Researchers from the region have also been building on the growing evidence base on brain health inequalities to argue in favour of new priorities for brain health promotion, such as dementia prevention.
That regional experience carries a broader lesson. The authors argue that it is not only the case that action to protect the brains of Latin Americans is urgent; innovative insights from Latin America and other global regions can inform approaches to brain health promotion worldwide. The research-policy partnerships being forged in the region, they suggest, exemplify what is required to close global brain health disparities. The authors argue that innovative insights from Latin America and other global regions, from algorithmic biomarkers of brain health gaps to constitutional neurorights protections, can inform approaches to brain health promotion worldwide.
The perspective closes with a restatement of its central claim. The framework outlined represents a fundamental shift in how brain health is approached, from individual, biomedical interventions towards comprehensive, equity-focused public health action that promotes the building of trust by working with the community on priority setting. The authors acknowledge that there is still much work to be done, from refining the definition of brain health to embedding community voices within it. But their argument is that the direction of travel is clear: brain health is a necessary condition of sustainable development, and achieving it requires the collective commitment to equity, inclusivity, justice and solidarity that the framework outlines, transforming brain health from an individual concern into a shared society priority for the benefit of all people and the planet.
Subject of Research: A perspective article proposing a public brain health framework for population-level action
Article Title: Public brain health: a framework for action to promote and safeguard brain health
Article References: Daly, T., Horstkötter, D., Eyre, H. A., Murphy, E., Gale, S. A., Cosgrove, L., Bruno, D., Cotter, E., Slachevsky, A., Fletcher, J. R., Wallace, L., Wajnerman-Paz, A., Manly, J. J., Fuller, J., Paddick, S.-M., Manet, R., Shaaban, C. E., Ienca, M., Winkler, A. S., … Dufouil, C. (2026). Public brain health: a framework for action to promote and safeguard brain health. BMC Global and Public Health, 4(1), Article 104. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44263-026-00340-4
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1186/s44263-026-00340-4
Keywords: public brain health, population health, health equity, dementia prevention, neurological disorders, intersectoral action, One Health, Latin America, neurorights, policy, community engagement, sustainable development
