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Document, Feature Article
Translating Innovation to Impact
This white paper presents the findings and recommendations from a review of the state of the art non-pharmacological treatments and care practices for people with Alzheimer's or other dementias and their family caregivers. It is intended to support deliberations by the Advisory Council on Alzheimer's Research, Care and Services, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and other government and private organizations about hot to make effective non-pharmacological treatments and care practices available to people who will benefit from then. Its development resulted from a public-private partnership between AoA and the Alliance for Aging Research, with funding from the Metlife Foundation.
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Alliance Views, Newsletters
Know Your Pulse: It Could Save Your Life
Think back and try to remember if your doctor or another health care professional checked your pulse during your last visit? Not with a stethoscope but with their fingers on your wrist? If you’re like many people you’re sure that they listened to your heart and checked your blood pressure, but you’re also pretty sure no one has taken your pulse in a while.
While listening to your heart with a stethoscope helps your doctor evaluate the functioning of your heart and its valves, a simple pulse check can better evaluate your heart’s rate and rhythm.
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Get Mad Column
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: Are We Sacrificing Health for a Balanced Budget?
Last summer, lawmakers were not just feeling the heat of the August sun in Washington when Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011(BCA). Under pressure to raise the country’s debt ceiling, the BCA allowed the president to do so by up to $2.8 trillion, but only by requiring the deficit to be slashed by $2.3 trillion over the next decade. Not a bad trade, right? Think again. The methods used to make these cuts could take a fat slice out of the federal budget that pays for research to prevent diseases we all fear as we grow older like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and heart disease.
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Science in the Spotlight
The Balancing Act: Managing Atrial Fibrillation
Every year around 75,000 Americans learn that they have atrial fibrillation. Some are diagnosed after noticing that their heart is racing or skipping beats. Others feel chest and throat pressure that they think is a heart attack. Or they go to their doctors feeling tired-out and weak all the time. Some feel nothing at all.
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Get Mad Column
Can We Work the Bugs Out? In Search of the Next-Generation IPAB
An IPAB is not the latest device created by Apple to play music or store your online files. IPAB is the Independent Payment Advisory Board and its purpose is to oversee costs in Medicare. The only similarity between IPAB and an iPAD is that both are small and complex units with tremendous power to change lives. But for those receiving their health care under the Medicare program, IPAB’s changes may not be for the better.
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Feature Article
Treatments for Age-Related Macular Degeneration: Going Head to Head
Exciting treatments make slowing and even restoring vision loss in wet age-related macular degeneration (wAMD) patients a reality. Two of the most frequently used treatments are currently in the spotlight as they go head-to-head in clinical trials comparing their effectiveness, and to some extent, exploring their costs.
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Alliance Views
Aortic Stenosis: Under-Diagnosed and Under-Treated
Aortic stenosis is a type of heart disease where the aortic valve becomes narrowed over time, obstructing blood flow to the body. It is more common with age and if left untreated, can lead to heart disease, significantly decreased quality of life, heart failure, and even death. Fortunately, aortic stenosis (AS) can usually be treated with surgery in patients of all ages.
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Alliance Views
Battling Health Disparities: Closing the Gaps
Thanks to enormous advances in public health and exciting breakthroughs in medical innovation, over the past century Americans have seen dramatic gains in health and longevity. The United States currently spends more on health care than any other nation and for most people, this means access to one of the best health care systems in the world. Unfortunately, it doesn’t benefit all people equally and the reality is that most minorities have less access to care, fewer options for prevention and treatment, and higher rates of disease and illness.
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Feature Article
Navigating Health Care Transitions: Tools for Information Sharing
At some point in our lives, most of us will face an illness where we have to deal with many different health care professionals—often spread out in different locations and settings across the health care system. Our primary physician may refer us to a specialist, or we may have an emergency that sends us to the ER and later requires that we be admitted to the hospital or see our primary physician for follow-up. We may even have to move from the hospital to a rehabilitation or long-term care facility.
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Get Mad Column
Medical Errors: How Many is Too Many?
Potentially deadly mistakes continue to plague U.S. hospitals, according to a new report.
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Feature Article
Woman's Breaking Point
A new national survey reveals too many physicians misread or do not even ask about the fears of their osteoporosis patients and inferentially suggests this may be one more reason why many patients do not stick with their medications.
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Get Mad Column
Champagne Wishes and Geriatric Dreams
Those inclined to celebrate the just-passed huge and historic expansion of Medicare should pause in their champagne toasts to consider this: most doctors, nurses and other health professionals in the U.S. receive almost no formal training in geriatrics, which seriously undermines the quality of care - especially safe prescription drug therapy - for America's seniors.
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Get Mad Column
Respect Your Elders
We see them sometimes on the evening news-stories about another scam targeting the elderly or the discovery of an employee physically abusing residents of a long-term care facility.
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Testimony
Ageism in Healthcare Testimony:
Senate Special Committee on Aging
Daniel Perry, executive director of the Alliance for Aging Research, submitted testimony before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, highlighting a report How American Health Care Fails Older Americans.
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Report
Ageism:
How Healthcare Fails the Elderly
Drawing upon scores of scientific studies, this important report shows how systemic bias against the elderly hurts older patients in the U.S.--highlighting ways in which the healthcare system fails older Americans. The report cites serious short-comings in medical training and prevention screening, and outlines treatment patterns that disadvantage older patients.
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Get Mad Column
Medicare Gaps- What's Not Covered
Medicare, simply stated, is the government's contract that it will provide healthcare insurance coverage for older Americans.
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Feature Article
Adding Luster to Your Golden Years
Exercise may well hold the key to the fountain of youth.
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Get Mad Column
Demand Better Training for Your Healthcare Provider!
Americans over the age of 65 represent over one-half of physician visits annually, yet only a small percent of healthcare professionals actually have specific training to appropriately care for this population.
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Feature Article
Putting People First: It's Time to Own Your Health Destiny--No one Else Will
Dr. S. Robert Levine is a crusader. He likes to say, "Just as 'all politics is local,' all healthcare is personal.
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Report
Research At Risk:
Will Medicare Changes Impede Breakthroughs?
On April 13, 2000, a public policy form was held on Capitol Hill to consider a single question: Will a greater federal role in paying for prescription drugs for older Americans dampen private sector investments in pharmaceutical research, possibly delaying or denying future medical breakthroughs? This report outlines the discussion.
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Report
Research At Risk
This document is intended to increase understanding of the interplay between Medicare reform, prescription drug coverage, and continued progress of biomedical research in America.
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Get Mad Column
Prescription for Disaster
Recently, I overheard a desperate young mother beg her pharmacist to call her doctor for a prescription for Diflucan for her ill daughter.
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Alliance Views
Shortage of Geriatricians: A Quiet But Critical Health Care Crisis
Ever wonder whether the doctor treating your parent, older relative or friend, or you, if you happen to be over 65, has any special training in treating older people?
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Report
Independence For Older Americans:
An Investment for Our Nation's Future
This report outlines the staggering cost to the U.S. of lost independence of older Americans due to chronic illnesses that are often unrecognized and under-treated.
Surprisingly, it's not the big killer diseases like cancer and heart disease that predominately rob people of their ability to live independently and pose the biggest threat to our nation's health and economic well-being, but rather the unrecognized and under-treated chronic conditions of aging--such as visual and mental impairment, incontinence, and physical immobility.
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Report
One Final Gift:
Humanizing the End of Life for Women in America
While boys outnumber girls at birth, women outnumber men by almost 4 to 1 after the age of 95. American women outlive men by an average of 6 years, making the face of aging predominately female.
One Final Gift shows that women are more likely than men to be sicker, poorer, alone, and with greater care needs at the end of their lives. This report identifies the disparities in research and public policies and raises the health, social, emotional, and spiritial concerns that confront many women as they near the end of their lives. It also outlines recommendations on how to best bridge these unacceptable gaps.
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Report
Seven Deadly Myths:
Uncovering the Facts About the High Cost of the Last Year of Life
This report tests some of the most common myths surrounding the financial and medical impact of end-of-life care, separating fact from fiction to show what really happens for most people during their last years of life.
