In The News

Dementia Cases Expected to Double by 2060: Study

The Hill / By Filip Timotija
 
Alzheimer’s disease is expected to spike nationwide in future years, and according to new data released by the Alzheimer’s Association, there is a significant shortage in the dementia care workforce.
 
Dementia cases in the U.S. are expected to double by 2060 when around 1 million Americans are projected to develop the memory-losing condition every year, according to a new study that was published Monday in the medical journal Nature Medicine. 
The study found that the risk of developing dementia after turning age 55 is around 42 percent. Dementia is a group condition that includes loss of concentration, judgment and memory. 
 
The collaborative study was funded by the National Institutes of Health to NYU Langone. It relied on the data garnered from the ongoing Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Neurocognitive Study, which began in 1987 and has tracked the cognitive function and vascular health of participants. 
 
“Our study results forecast a dramatic rise in the burden from dementia in the United States over the coming decades, with one in two Americans expected to experience cognitive difficulties after age 55,” said Josef Coresh, the study’s senior investigator and epidemiologist. 
 
The researchers discovered that a lifetime risk of suffering from dementia for men after turning 55 is 35 percent while it is 48 percent for women. For the most part, the higher risk among women is because of their lower death rates, according to researchers. 
The study also found those who had a variant of the APOE4 gene are at a higher risk of developing dementia. 
 
Blood pressure control and preventing diabetes are one of the ways to slow down cognitive decline and prevent dementia, according to researchers…

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6 Behaviors You Must Unlearn to be a Relevant Leader in 2025 

Forbes / By Glenn Llopis

Leadership today isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the days when a title or a corner office automatically commanded respect. Today, business leaders need more than authority, they need relevance. But being a relevant leader is not just about adopting new behaviors; it’s about unlearning bad habits. Especially those that do more harm than good. ... Here are six behaviors you must unlearn that once felt relevant and now may be holding you back. I’ve also included the six behaviors you must relearn.

  1. Stop Controlling Everything ...
  2. Transactional Leadership ... "leadership is more than ticking items off a to-do list. Your team needs presence." ...
  3. Always Need to Lead ...
  4. Playing It Safe ...
  5. Separating Work and Emotion ...
  6. Holding On to Bad Habits ...

Being a relevant leader is about being curious, adaptable, and grounded in reality. Leadership is not static. It’s a continuous process discovery plus action…

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Weekly US Map: Influenza Summary Update 

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

A Weekly Influenza Surveillance Report Prepared by the Influenza Division
utpatient Respiratory Illness Activity Map Determined by Data Reported to ILINet. This system monitors visits for respiratory illness that includes fever plus a cough or sore throat, also referred to as ILI, not laboratory confirmed influenza and may capture patient visits due to other respiratory pathogens that cause similar symptoms. 

https://www.cdc.gov/fluview/surveillance/2025-week-01.html

 

New Minimum Wage Takes Effect in Boulder, Colorado

Littler / By Luke Gilewski, Libby Valenzuela, and Jennifer Harpole

The City of Boulder has enacted its own local minimum wage ordinance, which took effect January 1, 2025, setting the city’s minimum wage at $15.57 per hour. The new law adds another challenge to multi-jurisdiction compliance for employers as the city’s minimum wage is higher than the State of Colorado’s, which increased to $14.81 per hour on January 1, 2025.

Since 2020, Colorado law has allowed local governments to enact their own minimum wages. As a result, communities across Colorado began exploring an increase to their local minimum wage, but to date, only three communities have adopted such laws – Denver, Edgewater, and unincorporated Boulder County.

Since the City of Boulder is located within Boulder County, employers with operations in both the city and the county will need to navigate a situation where employees performing similar work may be subject to different wage rates depending on their specific location on any given day. For comparison, effective January 1, 2025, unincorporated Boulder County – including Niwot, Eldorado Springs, Eldora, Allenspark, Gold Hill, Hygiene, Coal Creek Canyon, and those parts of Gunbarrel that are not part of the City of Boulder – has set its minimum wage at $16.57 per hour or $13.55 per hour with tip credit. The county’s wage will increase by a fixed amount each year until it reaches $25.00 per hour in 2030, before being indexed to inflation thereafter. This dynamic creates an added layer of complexity for employers, who must carefully track employee assignments across these differing localities to ensure compliance with local wage laws.  

The City of Boulder’s ordinance applies to employers with one or more “covered” employees, which are defined under the ordinance as individuals performing, or expected to perform, four or more hours of work for an employer in any given week within the City of Boulder. The ordinance defines “work” as “any services performed physically within the geographic boundaries of the City of Boulder on behalf of or for the benefit of an employer whether on an hourly, piecework, commission, time, task, or other basis.” Excluded from the law are individuals traveling through Boulder’s jurisdiction with no employment-related or commercial stops, individuals providing volunteer services that are uncompensated except for reimbursement for expenses such as meals, parking, or transportation, and independent contractors. Interestingly, the ordinance states that independent contractors are defined by federal – not state – law…

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Health Care for Poorest Coloradans is at Risk as Medicaid Costs Dominate Budget Debate in Legislature

The Denver Post | By Nick Coltrain and Seth Klamann

 In October, a group of Medicaid providers warned Colorado lawmakers that they were in trouble.

One after another, the providers — from hospitals, mental health clinics and community health centers — described a budgetary collision that’s played out for more than a year: Hundreds of thousands of Coloradans lost Medicaid coverage after the pandemic ebbed, resulting in less money for the clinics’ already-thin operations. Though those patients’ health insurance disappeared, they still needed care — but it’s no longer been reimbursed by the state. 

The results, the providers said, have been layoffs, hiring freezes, reduced hours and anxious number crunching.

“This is very serious,” said Devra Fregin, the executive director of Clinica Colorado, whose clinics treat low-income patients. “Something needs to change, or we’re not going to be able to serve our state to the best of our ability.”

The providers’ pleas found a legislature — and a Medicaid system — at a crossroads. As clinics ask for help, lawmakers convening this week for the 2025 legislative session are bracing to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget.

Legislators have said they’re loath to cut Medicaid and further strain a sagging system. But the program takes up roughly a third of the state’s general fund budget, and K-12 schools — which lawmakers recently celebrated funding fully after decades of exploiting legal loopholes — account for another third.

That reality may force legislators to spread the pain to the most critical parts of the budget. It also may spark a deeper examination of Medicaid, the safety-net system that provides coverage for roughly a quarter of the state’s residents. On Monday, budget-writers are set to hold a daylong hearing combing through the spending of the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which manages Medicaid. 

Citing that coming hearing, department officials declined an interview request last week. In emailed responses to written questions, executive director Kim Bimestefer said HCPF was “very concerned about state budget constraints and the impact on Medicaid over the short and long term. Despite some recent fluctuation, medical inflation continues to outpace growth in other goods and services.”

She said the agency also planned to discuss potential cuts during the Monday meeting with lawmakers.

The fiscal debate is set to dominate the legislature, which meets for four months beginning Wednesday, as lawmakers jockey for sparse funding for new programs — while also fighting to protect their priorities in a budget that must be balanced.

“I don’t want to cut Medicaid, and I don’t think there’s huge political appetite to cut Medicaid,” said Sen.-elect Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who sits on the Joint Budget Committee and previously served in the House. “I think there’s political appetite to try to fix what is going wrong.”…

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