👋 Hi! We are the UK Brain Health Foundation

Brain health is everybody’s business

Building a brain healthy United Kingdom together

Brain health underpins how we think, learn, connect, work, create and age. Every person has brain health, and it is shaped throughout life by our environments, experiences, opportunities and behaviours. This creates a powerful opportunity to build a better national approach to brain health, bringing together health, education, employment, research and communities through a shared platform focused on protecting, optimising and sustaining brain health across the lifespan.

“Brain health is the state of brain functioning across cognitive, sensory, social-emotional, behavioural and motor domains, allowing a person to realise their full potential over the life course, irrespective of the presence or absence of disorders.”

WHO

The UK Brain Health Foundation makes brain health a national priority

What we do

We are an independent national policy platform. We convene the people, institutions, and sectors that shape how the UK thinks about brain health, and we work to embed it structurally across public systems, from the NHS to schools to the Treasury. We are not a charity delivering services. We are not a research institution. We are a non-profit community interest organisation that exist to make sure that brain health is treated as the cross-government, whole-life, whole-population issue it actually is.

Why we exist

Up to 45% of dementia, 60-80% of strokes, around 25% of epilepsy, 30-50% of depression, 20-30% of anxiety disorders, and up to 40% of psychotic disorders cases are preventable. Cognitive health at work is deteriorating. Brain health in certain groups in society is chronically underserved. The gaps between neurology, psychiatry, public health, and living experience are costing us, in human terms and economic ones. Countries across the world are already responding. The UK needs to be at the front of that. UKBHF provides the mechanism to make it happen.

One national agenda

Our work is organised around five policy pillars. These are not delivery programmes, they are levers for national system change, designed to move brain health from fragmented silos into the mainstream of UK public life.

Five Policy Pillars

1. Education & Awareness

Brain health is often reduced to dementia or ignored entirely until something goes wrong. We work to change that. Our focus is on embedding brain health literacy into statutory training, professional standards, and public communication, from Initial Teacher Training to medical education to workplace policy. The goal is a national brain health narrative that is relevant to everyone, across every stage of life.

2. Brain Capital & Economic Policy

Chronic stress, cognitive overload, untreated symptoms, and exclusion from support cost the UK economy billions. We are building the economic and Treasury case for treating brain health as a productivity and workforce issue, developing a UK Brain Capital Index and connecting brain health to regional growth, healthy longevity, and the national skills agenda.

3. Prevention, Protection & Healthy Environments

The conditions that protect or damage the brain are shaped by where we live, work, and learn. This pillar embeds brain health into prevention policy, urban planning, digital regulation, and community infrastructure, giving people practical means to act on brain health in daily life, not just clinical settings.

4. Living, and Lived Experience Rights & Governance

The people who understand brain health most directly, those living with neurological and mental health conditions, carers, and young people, must form the leadership from the start. This pillar sets the standard for co-production across all our work and focuses policy attention on the gaps that clinical systems consistently fail.

5. Research, Data & Innovation

The UK has exceptional research capacity. What it lacks is alignment. This pillar works to join up UKRI, NIHR, universities, charities, and industry around shared brain health priorities, and to accelerate the journey from research finding to real-world implementation.

Get Involved

The UKBHF agenda needs a coalition to deliver brain health

UKBHF is a convening platform for the UK Brain Council and Youth Brain Council. Its reach and credibility depend on the breadth and quality of the organisations and individuals that stand behind it.

Partners

Partnership means contributing expertise, networks, or in-kind support to advance shared goals, not endorsing a specific political position.

Members

Membership is open to organisations across sectors with a genuine stake in brain health. Members contribute to pillar working groups, consultation processes, and the national research and policy agenda.

Join the coalition

Supported by:

UK Brain Council

The UKBHF and its convening arm, the UK Brain Council, are established to create a national framework for lifelong brain health in the United Kingdom.

Activities:

UKBC Roundtable: Building the UK Brain Economy

At the UK Brain Council second roundtable, Dr. Harris Eyre speaks about establishing a UK Brain Plan and the approach to incorporate a Brain Capital approach.

UK Brain Health Blueprint 2026-2036

Request Blueprint

The UK Brain Health blueprint, co-produced by the brain health community, sets out a national brain health policy framework for the UK. Its purpose is to address a critical structural gap: despite world-leading neuroscience, clinical expertise, and lived-experience leadership, the UK lacks a coherent national brain health policy that brings health, education, workforce, economic, and social systems into alignment across the life course.

Youth Brain Council

Through the Youth Brain Council the UKBHF recognises that youth experiences and creativity are important in building a healthier future. The YBC brings young people’s ideas into brain health conversations and decision making. Its mission is to make brain health easier to understand, more welcoming, and more useful for children and young people.

What the Youth Brain Council will do

Connect young people with living and professional experience in brain health globally;
Share young people’s ideas and experiences with leaders and decision makers;
Help produce campaigns, videos, activities, and resources for peers;
Work on brain health advocacy, protection, prevention, online wellbeing, learning, and healthy habits;
Help improve brain health in schools, colleges, workplaces, and local communities;
Help create youth-focused brain health policy and outputs from the UKBC.

Why it matters

Brain health starts being impacted early on in life. Our experiences, relationships, environments, and habits can all affect how our brains grow and stay healthy over time.
Young people understand the challenges they face today, including stress, stigma, social media pressure, online harms, loneliness, and finding support when they need it.
They are especially vulnerable to marketing and physiological effects of substances such as alcohol, nicotine products, and recreational drugs, yet they are insufficiently informed of these and further risks to their health.
Working with young people is essential to advocate for a life-course approach in brain health. Their voices can help create better ideas, better services, and a healthier future for everyone.