This Month's Top News Stories - July 2010
No Place Like Home: New R.I. Program Provides an Alternative to Placing 
Elderly in Nursing Homes
Francisco Rezendes spends a lot of time caring for his 86-year-old in-laws…Many relatives of frail elderly people do such work, day in and day out. But one aspect of the caregiver story is different for Rezendes, who is 62: he gets paid for his efforts through a government program.
Read this story from Rhode Island News
Culture Change Goes Mainstream
Bill Thomas, MD, would like to clear up a misconception about his position on nursing facilities: He doesn’t want to eradicate them; he wants to eliminate the traditional, institutional model of care that was adopted by nursing facilities nearly 50 years ago. “I want to abolish the practice of institutionalizing frail, older people,” he says. “The old model of the nursing homes needs to go away and be replaced with new models.”
Read article here
Additional article #1 on culture change
Additional article #2 on culture change
In the Hospital? Lucky You!
Scheduled mealtimes and limited food choices are a part of the past at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center and The Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel. Patients now receive meals “on demand” from a new room service program that operates out of the recently expanded 18,000-square-foot kitchen on the hospital campus.
From OregonLive.com
Can You Be Fat And Fit? More Health Experts Say Yes
Health experts now think it's altogether possible to be overweight — but still fit. They say measuring only an individual's BMI, which is a measurement of body fat based on height and weight, can be misleading. Muscle weighs more than fat, for one thing. Extremely muscular individuals could actually have BMIs that classify them as overweight or even obese. Increasingly, health experts say a better measure of overall health includes not only BMI but a test of "fitness," too.
Read the story or listen to the podcast from NPR News
A Decade Of Alzheimer's Devastating Impact
In 1999, Tom DeBaggio was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. He was 57. Soon after the diagnosis, he began talking with NPR about his illness. He wanted to document his decline, to break through what he called the "shame and silence" of Alzheimer's.
Read/listen to the story & read an excerpt from When It Get’s Dark and Losing My Mind