The 8th Federal Conference was organised in Cologne April 22, 2026 by the Federal Institute of Public Health (BIÖG) in the framework of its “Healthy and Active Aging” programme. 

The event focused on dementia prevention with the aim to raise public awareness on the topic of dementia prevention to educate the public and convey messages about primary and secondary prevention both to professionals and multipliers, as well as to showcase good practices both at the national and international level 

Recent studies show that a significant proportion of dementia cases are related to factors that can be influenced – such as lack of exercise, an unbalanced diet, smoking, high alcohol consumption, social isolation, untreated hearing or vision loss, high blood pressure or diabetes. Many of these risks arise long before the first symptoms. 

Up to 45% of dementias could be prevented or delayed by avoiding risk factors. At the same time, fear of dementia is widespread among the population: more than half of people in Germany are afraid of developing Alzheimer's or another form of dementia. 

JADEHealth was represented at the conference in Wokshop 4: “Learning from each other: Dementia strategies and good practice in Europe” that was facilitated by Nathalie Bélorgey, scientific project officer, on behalf of our consortium partner, the Federal Institute of Public Health BIÖG. 

In the framework of the workshop information was given on the insights of the work and preliminary results of Jade Health’s Work Package 7, focusing on characterization of dementia strategies and interventions for dementia prevention.  

Dott. Guido Bellomo, Researcher at the National Center for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion within the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), presented the preliminary results from the work conducted in WP7 tasks to characterise dementia strategies/plans and prevention interventions. 

Prof. Dr. Jenni Kulmala, professor at Tampere University (Finland) and senior researcher of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), introduced a multidomain dementia prevention training for healthcare professionals and older adults at risk of developing dementia. 

In addition, the planned/ongoing WP7 pilot actions in Italy (for individualised risk prevention) and Finland (multi-domain training intervention) were also presented as practical examples with the aim to deepen professionals’ competences in dementia prevention in other European countries.  

Dr. Ricarda Milstein OECD expert and (co-)author of the latest OECD Health Working Paper on “Policies for people with dementia across OECD countries" complemented input of JADE Health’s experts with a wider global context. 

The conference provided an excellent opportunity to create synergies, share best practices and enhance knowledge sharing on dementia prevention as a cross-cutting issue in health promotion, municipal prevention, care, counselling and education.  

See full program here

Photos by: Oliver Wachenfeld, showing Wokshop 4: Learning from each other: Dementia strategies and good practice in Europe with participation of Dott. Guido Bellomo, (ISS), Prof. Dr. Jenni Kulmala, (THL), ?Dr.Ricarda Milstein, OECD