A dementia prevention initiative for adults in Ottawa, offering a free personalized risk assessment tool and community programming designed to connect people to local supports that match their individual risk profile.
Key information
Who is this project for? Adults in Ottawa who want to understand and proactively reduce their personal risk of dementia. Underserved communities that face barriers to accessing mainstream healthcare and health prevention programs.
Project Lead: Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Project partners: Ottawa Public Health
Project status: ongoing, 2026-2030
Project location: Ottawa, Ontario
Project team members:
- Douglas Manuel, OHRI
- Erinn Salewski, OPH
- Stacey Fisher, OHRI
- Alysha Ahmed, OPH
- Sarah Beach, OHRI
- Carol Bennett, OHRI
- Mary Cavanagh, Patient Engagement/ Community Member
- Emily Coja, OPH
- Karim Mekki, OPH
Get in touch:
sbeach@ohri.ca
Project story
Background:
Guided by the 2024 Lancet Commission’s finding that up to 45% of dementia cases worldwide are linked to modifiable risk factors, the Precision Dementia Prevention (PDP) translates this knowledge into practical, community-level action. The initiative builds on the Project Big Life Dementia Risk Calculator (DemPoRT), a validated tool developed at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) with over 900,000 users worldwide. To scale this tool into a comprehensive prevention system, OHRI and Ottawa Public Health (OPH) partnered to develop a four-year program, funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The program will expand the DemPoRT algorithm, embed it in municipal public health workflows, and create a localized toolkit for other Canadian communities to do the same.
Goals:
The overarching aim of the project is to translate population-level risk evidence into personalized, community-connected prevention, starting in Ottawa and scaling nationally. To achieve this, the program pursues three goals:
- Build a better tool: Expand and update the DemPoRT dementia risk algorithm to reflect more modifiable risk factors, as identified by the 2024 Lancet Commission.
- Design a community prevention program: Co-develop, with community input, a prevention program that connects individuals to the online risk calculator, a local service referral system integrated with 211 Ottawa, and a hub model that matches people to supports aligned with their personal risk profile.
- Evaluate and scale nationally: Assess program reach, equity, and impact through usage data, community feedback, and pre/post evaluations — and produce a national Community Localization Toolkit enabling other Canadian communities to adapt and implement the Ottawa model.
Key Takeaways:
1) Acting before diagnosis. Most dementia programs focus on care and support after a diagnosis. We aim to intervene earlier, reaching community members while there is still an opportunity to act on modifiable risk factors and delay or prevent the onset of dementia.
2) Personalized and community-connected. We aim to give individuals a personalized picture of their dementia risk and connect them directly to local services and supports, making prevention actionable.
3) Built for Ottawa, designed to scale. By embedding dementia prevention into Ottawa’s public health infrastructure and documenting what works, we will build a replicable toolkit informed by a National Community Advisory Committee, so communities across Canada can launch their own prevention programs.