congressional-quarterly

Ever won­dered what explains the some­times sur­re­al, often mis­guid­ed, health poli­cies by our gov­ern­ment? Well,  it is beyond our hum­ble brains to cap­ture and artic­u­late what may be going on…but we now see that lack of access to qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion is cer­tain­ly not the main prob­lem. Deci­sion-mak­ing process­es, and struc­tur­al incen­tives, would prob­a­bly mer­it more attention.…

I men­tion this because we are real­ly impressed by the just-pub­lished 24-page spe­cial issue on Pre­vent­ing Mem­o­ry Loss by Con­gres­sion­al Quar­ter­ly Researcher, one of the main pub­li­ca­tions in Capi­tol Hill.

The pub­li­ca­tion is not free, but worth the price for any­one active pro­fes­sion­al­ly in the health­care sec­tor, or inter­est­ed in learn­ing about lat­est research and pol­i­cy trends, from aca­d­e­mics to stu­dents. You can buy Buy the Elec­tron­ic PDF ($4.95) or Buy the Print­ed Copy ($15 — $5 dis­count using pro­mo­tion code “L8BRAIN” = $10).

Descrip­tion

As the nation’s baby boomers age, they are increas­ing­ly wor­ried that their mem­o­ries will dete­ri­o­rate — and with good rea­son. An esti­mat­ed 10 mil­lion boomers will devel­op Alzheimer’s dis­ease or anoth­er mem­o­ry-destroy­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tion in the com­ing years. Pol­i­cy mak­ers and health offi­cials wor­ry that the result­ing bulge in the num­ber of suf­fer­ers will bur­den the nation’s already strained health-care sys­tem. In the wake of these con­cerns, a vibrant brain-fit­ness indus­try is offer­ing a vari­ety of ways to help peo­ple keep their brains healthy, includ­ing the use of cog­ni­tion-enhanc­ing drugs and exer­cise. But many experts say much of what the pub­lic is being told is of lim­it­ed val­ue, at best. Inten­si­fied brain research begun years ago at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health is just now begin­ning to pro­duce data that sci­en­tists hope will advance efforts to pre­vent mem­o­ry loss, but they wor­ry that flat fed­er­al fund­ing since 2003 may com­pro­mise the dri­ve for solutions.

[Read more…] about Pre­vent­ing Mem­o­ry Loss-CQ Researcher