Guaranteeing girls’ right to education: an imperative for global brain health

Garantizar el derecho de las niñas a la educación: un imperativo para la salud cerebral global

Dear Editor,

The March 2025 Report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Girl Goals: What has changed for girls? Adolescent girls’ rights over 30 years ¹ , on education, violence, and health, has wide-reaching implications that include population brain health.

The report found that, despite important progress, almost four out of ten adolescent girls worldwide do not finish upper secondary school, particularly those from poor, rural, and marginalised populations¹. As well as representing major missed life opportunities for millions of children worldwide, these low numbers also matter for brain health: the meta-analysis of the 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia found that low educational attainment is consistently the most robust modifiable risk factor for dementia, a syndrome of pathological age-related cognitive decline that is a leading cause of morbidity worldwide². Moreover, women with dementia outnumber men two-to-one, and regions where cases are expected to increase the most by 2050-the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa³ - correspond to those in which girls’ right to education is the least respected.

In our contemporary period, health inequalities have reached a crisis point⁴. In particular, the idea of the right to health is being eroded worldwide. For instance, the United States has recently withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO)⁵, whose core mission has always been to promote the right to health for everyone⁶. To resist short-sighted political impacts on brain health policy making, a human rights-based approach to brain health promotion^7,8 that adopts a life-course understanding of dementia² is needed. Importantly, education quality as well as quantity is important to maximise the benefits of education on brain health⁹.

Respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human right to education for girls and boys worldwide will take us collectively closer to equitable brain health promotion¹⁰. Guaranteeing such access to education is a global imperative for both girls’ rights and women’s brain health and has never been more urgent in our divided world with its aging population.

REFERENCES

• ¹ United Nations Children’s Fund. Girl goals: what has changed for girls? Adolescent girls’ rights over 30 years. New York: UNICEF; 2025.
• ² Livingston G, Huntley J, Liu KY, Costafreda SG, Selbæk G, Alladi S, et al. Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission. Lancet. 2024;404(10452):572-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01296-0
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01296-0
• ³ GBD 2019 Dementia Forecasting Collaborators. Estimation of the global prevalence of dementia in 2019 and forecasted prevalence in 2050: an analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet Public Health. 2022;7(2):e105-e125. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00249-8
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00249-8
• ⁴ Bambra C. The U-shaped curve of health inequalities over the 20th and 21st centuries. Int J Soc Determinants Health Health Serv. 2024;54(3):199-205. https://doi.org/10.1177/27551938241244695
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/27551938241244695
• ⁵ McQuillan C. President Trump orders US withdrawal from WHO. Lancet Infect Dis. 2025;25(3):e138. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(25)00104-5
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(25)00104-5
• ⁶ Meier BM. Human rights in the World Health Organization: views of the Director-General Candidates. Health Hum Rights. 2017;19(1):293-8. PMID: 28630561.
• ⁷ Daly T. (2025). Brain health is a human right: Implications for policy and research. Neuroscience, 569, 147 -154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2025.01.063
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2025.01.063
• ⁸ Ibanez, A., & Farombi, T. (2025). Biological imprint of education and rights-based brain capital. Alzheimer’s & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, 21(4), e70222. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70222
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70222
• ⁹ Gonzalez-Gomez, R., Cruzat, J., Hernández, H., Migeot, J., Legaz, A., Santamaria-García, H., Fittipaldi, S., Maito, M. A., Medel, V., Tagliazucchi, E., Barttfeld, P., Franco-O’Byrne, D., Castro Laguardia, A. M., Borquez, P. A., Avila-Funes, J. A., Behrens, M. I., Custodio, N., Farombi, T., García, A. M., Garcia-Cordero, I., Ibañez, A. (2025). Qualitative and quantitative educational disparities and brain signatures in healthy aging and dementia across global settings. EClinicalMedicine, 82, 103187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2025.103187
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2025.103187
• ¹⁰ Daly T. (2025). The right to education and brain health: A priority for advocacy. Alzheimer’s & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, 21(4), e70221. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70221
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70221

• Funding:
  Timothy Daly is a postdoctoral research fellow funded by the “Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale” (INSERM) on the MEMENTO project (France).

Edited by

• Editor-in-Chief:
  Ricardo Nitrini. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5721-1525

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  04 Aug 2025
• Date of issue
  2025

History

• Received
  07 Apr 2025
• Accepted
  06 May 2025