HHS WEEKLY REPORT
July 11 - 17, 2004

THIS ISSUE AVAILABLE ONLINE WITH EXPANDED INFORMATION AND PHOTOS AT:
http://www.hhs.gov/news/newsletter/weekly

IN THIS ISSUE:
1) HHS Partners with Lifetime to Improve Women's Health
2) Prevention: HHS Awards $6.78 Million to Expand Alzheimer's Disease Demonstration Programs
3) Science In the News: Studies Suggest People with Early Alzheimer's Disease Can Still Be Taught to Recall Information
4) Medicare Minute: HHS Announces Grants to States to Tell Low-Income Beneficiaries About 2006 Drug Benefit
5) Secretary Thompson's Public Schedule

HHS Partners with Lifetime to Improve Women's Health

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson hosted the premiere screening of "Lifetime's Speaking of Women's Health: The Get Health Challenge," a one-hour special presenting the small steps we can take to live healthier lives, Tuesday, July 6 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

"Women are so busy taking care of their families, their jobs and their lives, they don't always have time to think about their own health," Secretary Thompson said. "I'm very pleased to have our partnership with Lifetime and hope that this "Get Healthy Challenge" will encourage more women to take care of their own health too."

Heart disease, diabetes and obesity are three of the biggest health threats to American women. The television show provides advice on why and how women should address these health threats in conjunction with one another. Hosted by Florence Henderson and former "Real World" star, Rachel Campos, the show features four women of varying ages, backgrounds and lifestyles on a six-week lifestyle makeover to overcome their health problems in realistic ways.

"This is a fantastic episode because it features real women who have real health problems –diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol," Henderson said on the show. "I was amazed at how these women were able to improve their well being in just six short weeks."

Lifetime television worked with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Advertising Council to base it's program on the research and messages HHS and the Ad Council are using in their Healthy Lifestyles & Disease Prevention campaign. This campaign includes multi-media public service advertisements and a new interactive Web site, www.smallstep.gov to encourage Americans to make small activity and dietary changes to lead a healthier lifestyle.

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Prevention

HHS Awards $6.78 Million to Expand Alzheimer's Disease Demonstration Programs

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced on Thursday $6.78 million to develop innovative approaches to provide care for people with Alzheimer's disease and support for their family caregivers.

The Alzheimer's Disease Demonstration Grants to States (ADDGS) Program works to improve the responsiveness of home and community-based services to persons with dementia and their caregivers.

"The pain of losing a loved one to Alzheimer's disease is too often compounded by not being able to care of them," Secretary Thompson said. "This funding will give thousands of families the opportunity to provide the support, compassion, and love that only a family member could."

The awards will support one-year capacity building demonstration programs in two new states: South Dakota and Wyoming. The awards will further support three-year systems change demonstration programs in 22 states/territories: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The program is administered by HHS' Administration on Aging (AoA). It focuses on serving hard-to-reach and underserved people with Alzheimer's disease or related disorders.

For additional information about the new ADDGS grants, continuing grants, other information about Alzheimer's disease and tips for families affected by AD are available at http://www.aoa.gov/alz.

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Science In the News

Studies Suggest People with Early Alzheimer's Disease Can Still Be Taught to Recall Information

People who have early stage Alzheimer's disease could be more capable of learning than previously thought, according to two new studies supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a part of the National Institutes of Health. The promising studies suggest that some people with early cognitive impairment can still be taught to recall important information and to better perform daily tasks.

The findings are reported in the July-August 2004 issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Researchers in Florida found mildly impaired Alzheimer's patients who participated in 3-to-4 months of cognitive rehabilitation had a 170 percent improvement, on average, in their ability to recall faces and names and had a 71 percent improvement in their ability to provide proper change for a purchase. The participants also could respond to and process information more rapidly and were better oriented to time and place compared to a similar group of Alzheimer's patients who did not receive this targeted intervention. These improvements were still evident 3 months after the cognitive training ended.

This research is believed to be the first to combine several specific cognitive memory techniques into a single rehabilitation program for those who are mildly impaired with Alzheimer's.

These findings follow a recent study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis who found that older people with early-stage Alzheimer's retained functioning levels of implicit memory similar to young adults and older adults who did not have Alzheimer's. Implicit memory is relatively unconscious and automatic: Information from the past "pops into mind" without a deliberate effort to remember. This unconscious, implicit memory is important for common skills and activities, such as speaking a language or riding a bicycle. In many cases, people implicitly remember how to perform these activities, without being able to deliberately remember when or where they learned them.

"Taken together, these studies introduce the exciting notion that older people who are in the early stages of Alzheimer's can be taught techniques to help stay engaged in everyday life," Neil Buckholtz, Ph.D., head of the Dementias of Aging Branch at the NIA said. "These findings show it is possible to pinpoint what memory capabilities are preserved in early Alzheimer's disease and suggest ways to target those memory functions and make the most of them."

Alzheimer's disease is an irreversible disorder of the brain, robbing those who have it of memory, and eventually, overall mental and physical function, leading to death. It is the most common cause of dementia among people over age 65, affecting an estimated 4.5 million Americans.

For more information about this study, please go to: http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jul2004/nia-02.htm

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Medicare Minute

HHS Announces Grants to States to Tell Low-Income Beneficiaries About 2006 Drug Benefit

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson on Wednesday announced $125 million in state grants to help educate low-income Medicare beneficiaries who are currently receiving prescription drugs through state-funded programs about the new Medicare drug benefit coming in 2006.

"Our goal is to make sure people who now rely on state programs to help with prescription drugs will understand how the new Medicare benefit in 2006 will work together with those programs," Secretary Thompson said. "These grants will go a long way toward meeting that goal."

States with qualifying state pharmaceutical assistance programs (SPAPs) can use the grant funds to educate their enrollees about the new Medicare Part D (drug) benefit. The funds can be used to establish telephone support and counseling for those eligible for the new prescription drug benefit to help them select and enroll in one of the new Part D plans.

"This financial assistance for states will help Medicare work with states to help beneficiaries get the most out of the new drug benefit and the additional benefits that state programs can provide," Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said. "We will work with states to identify and use the best approaches to educate beneficiaries about their important new options for better drug coverage."

CMS will work with states to share "best practices" in outreach and education that have proven effective in helping Medicare beneficiaries make the drug card choice that is best for them, and that states and other organizations have used to help beneficiaries understand how to take advantage of other new benefits.

Funding was set aside in the Medicare Modernization Act for grants to SPAPs for fiscal years 2005 and 2006. The amount each state operating an SPAP will receive is based on the number of participants enrolled in each program as of October 1, 2003.

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Secretary Thompson's Public Schedule:

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Last updated: July 12, 2004
United States Department of Health and Human Services
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