Increased awareness and use of cognitive assessments seen as dementia-related priorities by RAND policy brief

Improv­ing Demen­tia Long-Term Care: A Pol­i­cy Blue­print (RAND Cor­po­ra­tion’s report):

“In 2010, 15 per­cent of Amer­i­cans old­er than age 70 had demen­tia, and the num­ber of new demen­tia cas­es among those 65 and old­er is expect­ed to dou­ble by the year 2050. As the baby boomer gen­er­a­tion ages, many old­er adults will require demen­tia-relat­ed long-term ser­vices and sup­ports (LTSS)…

RAND iden­ti­fied 25 high-impact pol­i­cy options cov­er­ing five broad objec­tives to improve demen­tia long-term ser­vices and sup­ports (LTSS) deliv­ery sys­tem, work­force, and financing…

Objec­tive 1: Increase pub­lic aware­ness of demen­tia to reduce stig­ma and pro­mote ear­li­er detec­tion of signs and symptoms.

• Cre­ate spe­cial­ized and tar­get­ed out­reach and edu­ca­tion pro­grams for the pub­lic, care­givers, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices orga­ni­za­tions, and per­sons with younger-onset dementia.
• Encour­age providers’ use of cog­ni­tive assess­ment tools for ear­ly demen­tia detec­tion and recognition.”

Learn more:

• Down­load 68-page brief as free PDF (opens new window)
• 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th, 2014)