Download PDF
City of Perth, state of Western Australia, country of Australia Independent Researcher, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
ABSTRACT
Background
Dementia prevention has emerged as a major global public health priority following growing evidence that up to 45% of dementia cases may be preventable or delayed through modification of fourteen life-course risk factors. Despite increasing public awareness of these findings, translation of epidemiological evidence into sustained behavioural change remains inconsistent, highlighting the need for stronger theoretical approaches to understanding how digital dementia education influences behaviour (Livingston et al., 2024; World Health Organization, 2025).
Objective
This paper presents an integrated programme of scholarship culminating in the development of a Realist-Informed Conceptual Framework for Digital Dementia Risk-Reduction Education. The framework establishes the theoretical and methodological foundation for a future mixed-methods realist evaluation examining how digital dementia risk-reduction education influences behavioural readiness among midlife adults.
Methods
Rather than undertaking a conventional narrative review, this paper synthesises five interconnected conceptual publications that progressively examined dementia prevention literacy, digital dementia education, health literacy, behaviour change theory, implementation science, and realist evaluation. Through iterative conceptual integration, these complementary contributions were consolidated into a unified explanatory framework capable of informing empirical investigation [1].
Results
The synthesis demonstrates that digital dementia education should be understood as a complex intervention operating through interactions between contextual conditions, educational resources, interpretative engagement, and behavioural readiness. The resulting Realist-Informed Conceptual Framework identifies interpretative engagement as the central generative mechanism through which individuals actively construct meaning from dementia prevention information and translate knowledge into behavioural intentions. Integrating dementia prevention literacy, health literacy, behaviour change theory, implementation science, and realist evaluation, the framework provides a coherent explanation of how Context–Mechanism–Outcome (CMO) configurations influence intervention effectiveness across different populations and settings.
Keywords: Dementia prevention; Dementia prevention literacy; Digital health; Health literacy; Behaviour change; Realist evaluation; Implementation science; Knowledge translation