The Ventura Council for Seniors (VCS), formerly the Ventura Council on Aging, formed in 1975, is designated by the Ventura City Council as the representative organization of all seniors (50 and over) in the City of Ventura. The VCS board is comprised of senior volunteers who reside in the city, along with a non-voting City liaison appointed by the Parks, Recreation, and Community Partnerships Department. This group meets quarterly to consider and gather input on local issues important to seniors. The VCS is responsible for making recommendations on these issues to the Ventura City Council.

Meetings

You are invited to participate in the Ventura Council for Seniors board meetings during the member/public communications segment of our agenda. Your concerns are our agenda!

Meetings are at the Ventura Avenue Adult Center, 550 N. Ventura Ave.

Contact 805-648-3035 or www.cityofventura.ca.gov/vcs for more information.
Or write to:
Ventura Council for Seniors
c/o City of Ventura
501 Poli St.
Ventura, CA 93001

On Tuesday, March 5, the Alzheimer’s Association released its 2019 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report, which provides an in-depth look at the latest statistics and information on Alzheimer’s prevalence, incidence, mortality, costs of care and impact on caregivers across the country and in California. It also reveals an important health assessment seniors are not getting – one that is critical for early detection of Alzheimer’s and other dementias – routine cognitive assessments. You can see the full report at alz.org/facts.

One of the biggest takeaways from this year’s report is that the Alzheimer’s burden in this country and state continues to grow.

More people are living with disease – An estimated 5.8 million Americans have Alzheimer’s dementia in 2019, including 670,000 in California.

More family and friends are serving as Alzheimer’s caregivers – In California, 1.6 million caregivers provided a total of 1.8 billion hours of unpaid care, valued at a total of $23 billion.

Death rates from Alzheimer’s continue to climb – Deaths due to Alzheimer’s have increased an alarming 145 percent since 2000, while deaths for most other major diseases have decreased. Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S.

The costs are unsustainable – For the third consecutive year the cost of caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s is surpassing a quarter of a trillion dollars. The costs to care for people with Alzheimer’s are expected to amount to $4 billion in California in 2019 – and are only expected to grow by 32% percent over the next six years (by 2025).

Additionally, this year’s special report highlights an important disconnect: despite a strong belief among seniors that cognitive assessments are important and that early detection is beneficial, only half are being assessed for cognitive decline, and just one in seven seniors (16 percent) receive regular assessments for memory or thinking issues during routine health checkups, compared to other common evaluations like cholesterol (83 percent), hearing or vision (73 percent), and diabetes (66 percent).

The Alzheimer’s Association is the world’s leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer’s care, support and research. It is the largest nonprofit funder of Alzheimer’s research. The Association’s mission is to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected, and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. Its vision is a world without Alzheimer’s. The Alzheimer’s Association California Central Chapter is headquartered in Santa Barbara with regional offices located in San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties. Visit www.alz.org/CACentralCoast or call 805.892.4259 for more information.

Lori Sunshine has been working as a Professional Music Therapist since the first year that Board Certification was established, in 1983. She is currently working full time here in Ventura County: part time in private practice and part time with Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association.

On March 29, 2019, she received the Professional Practice Award from the American Music Therapy Association’s Western Region Chapter at their annual conference in Portland, OR. The award recognizes individual AMTA members who have made a significant contribution to the professional development of other members of the Association. Lori has offered dozens of Workshops and Seminars on the topic of Music Therapy and presented at many AMTA conferences during her 35 years of service. She has been a trusted educator and role model for those entering the field and is a passionate advocate for the benefits of Music Therapy in health care.

Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association has offered Music Therapy as part of their Hospice program since 2015. There is a wealth of research indicating that music is the last external sensation that registers with a dying patient. Music not only provides comfort to patients and their caregivers but can also evoke strong feelings in many patients, helping to alleviate pain, lower stress and even break through the isolation of dementia or memory loss. Livingston’s Music Therapists design sessions to meet their patient’s needs, which may include such activities as live performance (Lori plays harp, piano and guitar), singing, music listening, and compiling a mix of a patient’s favorite songs.

Livingston’s Music Therapy program employs two professional Music Therapists who provided 322 hours of music therapy to 78 patients on hospice care in 2018. Livingston is proud of Lori and her accomplishments and for making our program such a success. The program is partially funded through a grant from the Henry W. Bull Foundation. If you would like to learn more about Livingston and the Music Therapy program, please visit www.lmvna.org.

Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association is having Mother’s Day Luncheon as an opportunity to honor mothers — both living and deceased — for the love, understanding, and hope they bring to our families and to the community. This year they are delighted to honor Nan Drake and remember Helen A. Olson, for their commitment to helping others in Ventura County. Join us as we recognize the achievements of these two amazing women.

All proceeds from this event support quality health care, compassionate hospice and bereavement programs, and vital in-home care services. The luncheon is on April 26, from 11:30am – 2:00pm, $125 per person and will be held at the Las Posas Country Club, 955 Fairway Dr., Camarillo. For more information http://www.lmvna.org/mothersday/

by Linda Stalters and Raymond Y. Cho

Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a troubling regulation that would weaken Medicare Part D, the federal program that helps 45 million American seniors and people with disabilities afford prescription drugs.

Part D is unique among government programs. The federal government allows people to purchase coverage from private insurers. The government subsidizes these plans but otherwise lets Medicare beneficiaries choose the coverage that’s best for them.

Congress did put some guardrails on insurers when it created Part D. It required Part D plans to cover all medications in six “protected classes” of drugs, including antipsychotics, antidepressants, and anticonvulsants. These medicines help treat people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses.

The proposed regulation would amend the six protected classes rule and allow insurers to exclude many drugs from Part D plans. Millions of Americans who rely on these crucial medications would be left to fend for themselves. Congress must halt this regulation now.

Our nation is struggling to provide care for people with schizophrenia and other psychosis-based illnesses. These patients die 10 to 28 years sooner than other Americans, and hundreds of thousands of people with serious psychiatric illnesses have been “re-institutionalized” in state prisons and county jails.  

CMS is advancing this rule as a cost-saving measure. But any short-term savings would be canceled out by increased spending on emergency rooms and the penal system, since more people with serious brain disorders will end up in jail.

In addition to antipsychotics and anticonvulsants, the six protected classes include immune-suppressants for treatment of transplant rejection, HIV/AIDs drugs, and cancer medications.

The regulation also authorizes insurers to use “fail first” policies on drugs in the six classes. These policies require patients to take cheaper, less effective medications first. Only when these drugs fail will the insurer allow doctors to prescribe newer, more effective drugs. 

If patients must endure successive failures on the least costly medications first and bear the associated increases in cost, what message does that send? In particular, for patients with serious psychiatric illnesses, “failure” means a harrowing descent into a psychotic crisis often ending in an emergency room admission or worse.

Individuals who suffer from schizophrenia-related brain illnesses are clinically complex patients, in part, because their treatment regimen includes multiple medications. Due to genetic differences across individuals, each antipsychotic and antidepressant medicine produces varied outcomes and side effects. 

It takes time to find the correct medication regimen. If insurers limit which medicines are available, patients will suffer.  

The CMS proposed rule affecting the six protected classes in Part D would not save money — rather, it would cost lives. We implore Congress to ensure the six protected classes remain protected. 

Linda Stalters, M.S.N. is the founder and CEO of the Schizophrenia and Related Disorders Alliance of America. Raymond Y. Cho, M.D., SARDAA’s board chairman, is a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine.

Senior News Line
by Matilda Charles

Three years ago I started thinking about getting a dog. My friends had told me about sites like shoppok that have dogs listed for sale and rehoming, but I wasn’t sure whether to buy a younger dog, or whether to rehome an older dog. All I knew was that seeing neighbors out with their small dogs, made me realize that I wanted a real dog, a big one, not a dog that would fit in my purse. I made a pro-con dog ownership list, but over time the list of reasons for not getting a dog has gotten longer and longer.

Maybe my story will help if you’re considering adopting a dog.

Where I live there are a lot of rules, and one of them concerns the size of dogs. Specifically, the dog cannot top 25 pounds. The neighborhood rumor mill supplied this story: A woman was told to get rid of her dog after management showed up at her door with a set of scales and demanded to weigh the pooch, which unfortunately came in at nearly 30 pounds. The owner moved out and took the dog with her.

A size limit means I can’t adopt a young mixed-breed shelter mutt because there’s no real way to know how large the dog will be when it grows.

There are no sidewalks here. What we have for half the year are increasingly narrow roads with snow banks on the sides. I don’t have a fenced yard either, which means no place to let a big dog romp and play.

By the time I got this far, I knew it was hopeless. I never even got to the part about potential veterinary costs, or the price of quality dog food and grooming, flea treatments like the difference between frontline plus and gold, and toys.

I’ve found a partial solution, however. I’m thinking of signing up as a dog walker volunteer at the shelter. Maybe I’ll fall in love with a tiny, purse-size dog.

(c) 2019 King Features Synd., Inc.

by Barbara Radziszewska Health Scientist Administrator, Division of Geriatrics and Clinical Gerontology.

Starting this year, a new NIH inclusion policy mandates that participants of all ages be included in human subject’s research, unless there is a scientific or ethical reason for exclusion of any age category. The NIH Inclusion Across the Lifespan policy, developed in response to requirements in the 21st Century Cures Act, has been in effect since the Jan. 25, 2019, grant submission deadline.

The inadequate inclusion in clinical trials of older adults, especially those affected by age-related conditions, has been amply documented across many disease areas, including those that disproportionally affect older people. Participants enrolled in clinical trials are frequently younger and healthier than the typical population affected by a given disease or condition.

Some studies impose arbitrary upper age limits of enrolled participants. Others use exclusion criteria that disproportionally affect older people, such as multiple morbidities, polypharmacy, frailty, and physical or cognitive impairments. These restrictions reduce the relevance of the data collected in clinical trials to real-life patients in clinical settings. As a result, there are critical gaps in the evidence base and in clinical guidelines for older, more complex patients.

NIA staff and our NIH colleagues have been conducting ongoing research and analysis of this issue for a number of years. The 21st Century Cures Act mandated a workshop held in 2017, which resulted in recommendations for change (PDF 857K). More recently, NIA Deputy Director Dr. Marie A. Bernard and I, along with our colleagues Dr. Jaron Lockett and Dr. Samir Sauma, analyzed data on subject inclusion in Phase III clinical trials from 1965 to 2015, focusing on diseases that are the most frequent causes of hospitalization and/or disability in older adults.

Our analysis revealed striking evidence for the need to include more older adults. We found that 33 percent of the studies had arbitrary upper age limits, and 65 percent of the trials reported data of participants who were younger than the typical population affected by the disease under study. In addition, many clinical trials excluded participants based on multimorbidity and polypharmacy.

The expanded inclusion policy presents a new set of challenges to the scientific community, as it has implications for study design and recruitment planning. Although the implementation of the new policy may necessitate increasing the planned sample size to overcome the additional variability introduced by more inclusive enrollment policies, the expected result is well worth the additional effort and expense, given the urgent need to address critical gaps in the evidence base on the diseases and conditions of later life. This is a solid step in the right direction for improving clinical care for the nearly 50 million U.S. adults over age 65.

by Stacy Washington

President Trump thinks Americans pay too much for prescription drugs — and says foreign countries are to blame. In a speech, he criticized nations that use socialist price controls to artificially hold down the cost of pharmaceuticals. “For decades,” he noted, “other countries have rigged the system so that American patients are charged much more . . . for the exact same drug.”

The president’s criticism is spot on. That’s why a new initiative from his Department of Health and Human Services is so shocking. HHS Secretary Alex Azar just proposed a major overhaul of Medicare that would impose those socialist price controls here in the United States.

Instead of putting America first and forcing other countries to play by the rules, the proposal legitimizes foreign freeloading. The price controls would limit seniors’ access to lifesaving drugs and chill pharmaceutical research efforts.

President Trump correctly notes that prescription drugs are more expensive in America. The reason for the price disparity is simple. Nations with socialized medicine, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, cap prescription prices. If a drug is too expensive, the government won’t offer it to patients.

Once drug companies have developed a medicine, they have a limited amount of time to sell it and recoup their costs before the patent expires. So it makes sense for American drug companies to market their products in price-controlled nations, even if that means granting steep discounts. The alternative is earning no foreign revenue at all.

As a result, American patients fund the lion’s share of global research and development costs. The HHS proposal wouldn’t rectify this injustice — it would only further harm American patients.

Right now, Medicare drug payments are based on each medicine’s average domestic sales price. Sec. Azar wants to instead index Medicare payments to the average prices paid in 14 other countries.

Copying other nation’s socialist price controls would reduce American patients’ access to the latest medicines.

Consider treatments for respiratory conditions. All new respiratory drugs released globally in the last seven years are available to Americans. Patients in Japan and France — two of the reference countries included in Sec. Azar’s pricing index — can only access 55 percent of those medicines.

Domestic price controls would also smother drug innovation, depriving future patients of potentially lifesaving cures.

Europe is a cautionary tale. The region led the world in biopharmaceutical R&D investment in the 1980s. But once several nations adopted price control policies, Europe suffered a dramatic decline in research investment. Today, the United States spends 40 percent more on biopharmaceutical R&D than Europe.

Sec. Azar’s proposal would reward the forces of socialism abroad and threaten American ingenuity and prosperity at home. Patients can only hope that President Trump orders his HHS secretary to scrap the plan.

Stacy Washington is a decorated Air Force Veteran, an Emmy nominated TV personality, and the host of the nationally syndicated radio program “Stacy on the Right.”

Volunteers Assisting the Elderly, one of 25 original pilot programs launched in 1984, now joins hundreds of volunteer caregiving organizations across the nation in celebrating the 35th Anniversary of Volunteer Caregiving starting in April with National Volunteer Month. (https://nvcnetwork.org/wp/index.php/program-map/)

“It’s comforting to know that there is an entire month dedicated to celebrating and recognizing volunteers,” said Jay Friedman, treasurer for the National Volunteer Caregiving Network. “I chose to give my time to help seniors through Volunteer Caregiving, which is a total contrast to my ‘day-job.’ That’s one of the reasons I enjoy being a volunteer.”

Every week, thousands of volunteer caregivers across the country are lending helping hands to seniors by picking up groceries, providing a ride to the doctor or helping change a light bulb–all at no cost. “Here in Ventura County, we have hundreds of volunteers serving our current enrollment of 500 seniors,” said CAREGIVERS Executive Director Tammy Glenn. “We’re so grateful to the donors who allow us to offer these services at no cost to one of our most vulnerable populations.”

In fact, 10,000 people are turning 65 every day for the next 12 years in the United States, making support for our aging Americans one of the most critical needs of our time. “Opportunities to volunteer with seniors are abundant, and among the most rewarding of all volunteer experiences,” said Inez Russell, president of the Board of Trustees for the National Volunteer Caregiving Network. “I can’t think of a better way to ‘pay it forward’! Plus, we’re all headed in that direction, so now is the time to fuel a culture of care and compassion.”

To that end, Ventura County’s own CAREGIVERS serves seniors over the age of 60 who need a helping hand to remain living independently as they age. The hallmark of Volunteer Caregiving is a one-on-one match, but there are lots of ways to give a couple hours per week and make a difference.

Volunteer Caregiving is a national movement that was launched 35 years ago in 1984 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Faith in Action program. Transportation to medical appointments is one of the most requested needs that helps seniors continue to live independently, with dignity through end-of-life.

For more information, call (805) 658-8530 or visit www.vccaregivers.org to volunteer, donate or refer a senior.