gerontology

Reminder: ASA Brain Health Day in Oakland, CA

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We have two excel­lent new speak­ers, Anne Hin­ton and Steve DeMel­lo, to add to the excel­lent ros­ter dur­ing the ASA Brain Health Day to take place on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2009, at the Oak­land Mar­riott City Center.

Anne Hinton San Francisco Department of Aging and Adult ServicesAnne Hin­ton is Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Depart­ment of Aging and Adult Ser­vices. In this capac­i­ty she has respon­si­bil­i­ty for In-Home Sup­port­ive Ser­vices, Adult Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices, Pub­lic Guardian, Pub­lic Con­ser­va­tor, Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tor, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pay­ee, Vet­er­ans Ser­vices, Infor­ma­tion and Refer­ral, and the Part­ner­ship for Com­mu­ni­ty Based Care and Sup­port. In addi­tion the Depart­ment funds 45 com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice providers for pro­grams such as con­gre­gate meals, senior cen­ters, home deliv­ered meals, case man­age­ment, fam­i­ly care­giv­ing, etc.

Her career spans more than 25 years includ­ing posi­tions as the Direc­tor of Home Care, Care Man­age­ment and Fidu­cia­ry Ser­vices Depart­ment for the Insti­tute on Aging, the Direc­tor of Aging Ser­vices for San Fran­cis­co Catholic Char­i­ties and Direc­tor of the South San Fran­cis­co Senior Ser­vices. Ms. Hin­ton has expe­ri­ence as a lecturer/teacher in the field of Gerontology.

Steven DeMello Public Health InstituteSteven DeMel­lo has over 30 years of expe­ri­ence in research, hos­pi­tal oper­a­tions, strate­gic plan­ning, sys­tems man­age­ment and con­sult­ing. He is cur­rent­ly a Research Pro­gram Direc­tor at the Pub­lic Health Insti­tute. His most recent posi­tion wass as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and Senior Advi­sor of the Health Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter (HealthTech), a non-prof­it research group and expert net­work based in San Fran­cis­co. Pri­or to HealthTech he served as chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of ezboard, Inc. a large first-gen­er­a­tion con­sumer social net­work­ing com­pa­ny. His pre­vi­ous posi­tions include serv­ing as Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Cal­i­for­nia Health­care Sys­tem, Pres­i­dent and COO of Alliance Home Care Man­age­ment, Inc., and Prin­ci­pal at the glob­al man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm A.T. Kear­ney. He received a BA in Eco­nom­ics from Clare­mont McKen­na Col­lege, and an MBA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago.

Reg­is­tra­tion fees are still $150, but will increase to $190 by August 29th. More infor­ma­tion at ASA Brain Health Day. If you are plan­ning to attend…hurry!

Making Healthy Choices: Primare Care and Prevention

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Hiroshi Komiya­ma, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo and Chair­per­son of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy I am a mem­ber of, just pro­vid­ed coun­cil mem­bers with a brief update of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the recent World Eco­nom­ic Forum.

Part of the pro­ceed­ings are pub­lic — you may enjoy read­ing this pan­el write-up of the ses­sion Health­care under Stress:

- “Japan has the world’s old­est pop­u­la­tion. Health and longevi­ty cre­ate wealth and, thus, “health begets wealth”. It is doc­u­ment­ed that nations that devel­op a five-year life expectan­cy advan­tage also cre­ate a larg­er GDP. A healthy child­hood and adult­hood con­tribute to a more pro­duc­tive old age. New mar­kets and indus­tries are aris­ing – “sil­ver indus­tries” such as finan­cial ser­vices, health, hous­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty geared to senior cit­i­zens. Longevi­ty needs to be linked to health – includ­ing cog­ni­tive health – and lifestyle choic­es play a major role in health.”

- “The pub­lic health focus is shift­ing from infec­tions to car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases. Com­plex new mod­els are nec­es­sary to devel­op bet­ter respons­es and improved health – with the pri­ma­ry empha­sis on “real­ly good pri­ma­ry health­care” and pre­ven­tion – to low­er costs. Pre­ven­tion increas­es the healthy years of a person’s life. The chal­lenge is cre­at­ing the incen­tive for pre­ven­tion: how can peo­ple be encour­aged to make healthy choic­es? Mobi­lized pop­u­la­tions can dri­ve the change. Fin­land has an 80% low­er inci­dence of heart dis­ease than 30 years ago due to such incentives.”

Full write-up: Health­care under Stress

Relat­ed articles:

- The Future of the Aging Soci­ety: Bur­den or Human Capital?

- Update: Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Innovation

Update: Global Consortium for Neurocognitive Fitness Innovation

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As men­tioned before, the World Eco­nom­ic Forum asked me to write “an 800 words sum­ma­ry of your most com­pelling action­able idea on the chal­lenges of geron­tol­ogy”, in prepa­ra­tion for the Inau­gur­al Sum­mit of the Glob­al Agen­da that will take place Novem­ber 7 to 9th in Dubai.A good num­ber of Sharp­Brains read­ers and clients offered their insights — and expressed an inter­est in read­ing the draft. So below you have — a pro­pos­al to cre­ate a Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion, build­ing on our exist­ing mar­ket research and advi­so­ry ser­vices work. Your thoughts?

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The Con­text

Grow­ing Demands on Our Brains: Pic­ture 6.7 bil­lion Prim­i­tive Brains inhab­it­ing a Knowl­edge Soci­ety where life­long learn­ing and mas­ter­ing con­stant change in com­plex envi­ron­ments are crit­i­cal for pro­duc­tive work, health and per­son­al fulfillment.

Wel­come to Plan­et Earth, 2008.

Fur­ther stretched by increased longevi­ty: Now pic­ture close to 1 bil­lion of those brains over the age of 60 – and please remem­ber that, less than 100 years ago, life expectan­cy was between 30 to 40 years. The rapid­ly evolv­ing Knowl­edge Soci­ety is plac­ing new and enor­mous demands on our “prim­i­tive” human brains. And the longer our lifes­pans, the more obvi­ous the “cog­ni­tive gap”. Hence, from a health point of view, the grow­ing [Read more…] about Update: Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Innovation

Brain Fitness Newsletter: Premium Research Sponsors

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Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by brain fitness and health newslettersub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Have you ever won­dered how we can main­tain Sharp­Brains’ web­site, blog and newslet­ter with­out sell­ing any prod­ucts and with only lim­it­ed adver­tis­ing? The answer is, we offer mar­ket research to orga­ni­za­tions such as health­care providers, research cen­ters, tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ers, ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, con­sult­ing and train­ing com­pa­nies, and more.

Our new Pre­mi­um Research Spon­sors pro­gram will allow pio­neer­ing orga­ni­za­tions to col­lab­o­rate with us to shape the future of the brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health field, by spon­sor­ing and access­ing the most up-to-date infor­ma­tion on the sci­ence and best prac­tices to assess and improve cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing across the lifes­pan. You can learn more about the Pre­mi­um Research Spon­sors pro­gram Here.

Mar­ket News 

All­state: Can we Improve Dri­ver Safe­ty using Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Train­ing?: Insur­ance com­pa­ny All­state and brain fit­ness soft­ware devel­op­er Posit Sci­ence just announced a very intel­li­gent ini­tia­tive, and Tom War­den, Assis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent and Leader of All­state’s Research and Plan­ning Cen­ter, explains to us why cog­ni­tive train­ing may be the new safe­ty fea­ture fol­low­ing seat belts and airbags.

The Cog­ni­tive Health and Fit­ness Mar­ket On The Move: As you have prob­a­bly seen, the Cog­ni­tive Health and Brain Fit­ness field is rapid­ly evolv­ing. Here we high­light some of the main devel­op­ments affect­ing the field over the last 6‑months: pub­lic pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives in Cana­da and the US, the grow­ing role of com­put­er­ized assess­ments, sev­er­al ven­ture cap­i­tal rounds, major ini­tia­tives by insur­ance com­pa­nies, and sig­nif­i­cant research findings.

The Big Picture

Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket: Let’s step back and ask our­selves, “Why is the field evolv­ing in such a fast way? What is hope, what is hype, what is real­i­ty?” A spate of recent glob­al news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and brain train­ing reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ur­al, non drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very time­ly, giv­en an aging pop­u­la­tion, the increased preva­lence of Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs in the US that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and lifestyle changes. This arti­cle sum­ma­rizes the main mar­ket dynam­ics, open ques­tions, and top trends to watch for.

Nour­ish­ing Our Brains and Minds

Teach­ing is the Art of Chang­ing the Brain: Lau­rie Bar­tels promis­es, “I have read a num­ber of books that trans­late cur­rent brain research into prac­tice while pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions for teach­ers to imple­ment. This is the first book I have read that pro­vides a bio­log­i­cal, and clear­ly ratio­nal, overview of learn­ing and the brain.” Go and enjoy her review of a very inter­est­ing book by James Zull, Direc­tor Emer­i­tus of the Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­ter for Inno­va­tion in Teach­ing and Edu­ca­tion at Case West­ern Reserve.

Phi­los­o­phy as the Miss­ing Link in School Cur­ric­u­la: Kim­ber­ly Wick­ham answers pro­vides some good answers to the ques­tion, “Why would any­one want to teach phi­los­o­phy to pre-ado­les­cent chil­dren? that will engage your crit­i­cal think­ing skills.

A User’s Guide to Life­long Brain Health: Drs Simon Evans and Paul Burghardt hope (as we do) that the emerg­ing empha­sis on cog­ni­tive exer­cise and fit­ness helps com­ple­ment ‑not sub­sti­tute- oth­er lifestyle fac­tors impor­tant for the “phys­i­cal health of the brain and all the sys­tems it com­mu­ni­cates with”. Think: nutri­tion, exer­cise, sleep.

Exer­cis­ing Our Brains

Excel­lent Read­er Com­ments: Our last newslet­ter gen­er­at­ed a round of excel­lent  com­ments by read­ers on cog­ni­tive train­ing, Posit Sci­ence and Alzheimer’s Aus­tralia, geron­tol­ogy and the brain, and the val­ue of videogames. Come enjoy this col­lec­tive wis­dom and par­tic­i­pate as you wish.

Brainy Haikus:
riv­er with haikus
flow­ing in since the summer
keep­ing  us afloat

The Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy?: The World Eco­nom­ic Forum has asked me, as one of the 16 mem­bers of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy, for “an 800 word sum­ma­ry of your most com­pelling action­able idea on the chal­lenges of geron­tol­ogy.” Feel free to help me out by offer­ing your own action­able ideas, either relat­ed to the dis­ci­pline of geron­tol­ogy itself or on ways to best engage the grow­ing num­ber of brains over the age of 60 in our planet.

Enjoy!

Global Agenda Council: the Challenges of Gerontology?

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I announced two months ago (Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils: The Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy) that I had been invit­ed to join a very stim­u­lat­ing new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum.

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Update (Novem­ber 2nd, 2008): my pro­pos­al is to cre­ate a Glob­al Con­sor­tium for Neu­rocog­ni­tive Fit­ness Inno­va­tion. Thank you for your com­ments below!

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Next month, 700 experts will meet to dri­ve an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary agen­da cov­er­ing 68 top­ics (see below); 16 of us focused on the Chal­lenges of Gerontology.

Dubai To Host 700 Of The World’s Most Influ­en­tial Lead­ers From Acad­e­mia, Busi­ness, Gov­ern­ment and Soci­ety At First World Eco­nom­ic Forum Sum­mit on the Glob­al Agen­da (I did­n’t write the title of the press release…)

- “The World Eco­nom­ic Forum, in part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment of Dubai, will hold its inau­gur­al Sum­mit on the Glob­al Agen­da in Dubai from 7 to 9 Novem­ber 2008. The Sum­mit is a new, unique gath­er­ing of [Read more…] about Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil: the Chal­lenges of Gerontology?