How dementia-friendly shops, offices and cities offer hope for sufferers

In coming decades, rates of dementia will rise sharply, partly due to a “silver tsunami” as the boomer generation ages and partly because we are living longer than ever. By 2030, the WHO predicts 75.6 million people globally will have the disease.

In response, cities around the world are creating communities that better help people with dementia go about their daily lives (there are more than 200 such dementia-friendly communities in England and Wales alone).

This includes engaging businesses whose customers may have or be caring for people with dementia. “Making small changes in the way businesses and communities act can transform the quality of life and the contribution those with dementia and their carers can make,” says George McNamara, policy chief at Alzheimer’s Society.

Those small changes include training companies to recognise and support people with cognitive decline. In Bruges, for example, dozens of shops are designated as dementia friendly. Select employees are trained to recognise customers with the condition, allowing them to help those struggling to pay or find what they need, for example.

In Greater Manchester, taxi drivers are also being trained as “dementia friends” who recognise and assist customers with dementia, while in London, Lord’s cricket ground has created a project to reduce stigma and raise awareness. London recently announced a goal to become the world’s first dementia-friendly capital by 2020. Key areas of focus include (pdf) working with local health authorities to improve diagnosis rates and collaborating with Transport for London to make getting around safer and easier.

“If you get it right in cities you can have a big impact on a large number of people,” says Mark Drane, a Bristol-based architect and doctoral researcher with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments. “And a city, in theory, has the levers to pull, especially for integrated care.”

Elsewhere, banks are training employees to help people with the dementia manage their money. HSBC, for example, has joined with Alzheimer Scotland and the Alzheimer’s Society in a three-year awareness raising partnership that has so far trained 2,000 UK staff across 742 branches.

In Southampton, British Gas is training staff as “dementia champions”, who can then teach other local business people and the public about the needs of those with dementia, holding monthly drop-ins to support people with the disease and their carers, and connecting staff to volunteer and fundraising opportunities in the community.

Around 7,000 of British Gas’s 30,000 UK staff are taking part in a dementia friends programme that trains them to be more informed about the illness.

Cutting costs

In addition to their work supporting customers, British Gas and Centrica are working to support employees who face dementia-related issues in their own lives. British Gas carers’ network, for example, offers a range of support, including giving employees flexibility to attend family members’ hospital appointments.

Centrica estimates that its caregiver support initiatives (paywall) save £2m in staff retention and potential training costs, and another £4.5m in preventing absenteeism of employees who are caregivers.

A 2014 report found that dementia costs UK businesses roughly £1.6bn per year, because of carers, more than half of whom are in work, having to reduce their hours or give up their jobs to look after a relative or friend with dementia. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates dementia costs US businesses $ 61bn (pdf), more than half of which it attributes to costs to businesses – including lost productivity – related to employees providing care.

As well as saving money through supporting employees, assisting customers with dementia offers businesses an opportunity to build and maintain their customer base. Sainsbury’s and the Federation of Small Businesses are among those that joined a federal retail task and finish group, which has produced a guide (pdf) on making shops dementia friendly. This isn’t merely corporate altruism: 83% of people with memory issues have changed where they shop based on how the business caters for people with dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Society.

While a single company can have a significant impact locally, a multi-sector approach is crucial to creating dementia-friendly cities. Care City, for example, a research, education and innovation site in north-east London, works with the technology sector to develop products such as wearable devices for those with dementia.

Through NHS England’s healthy new town programme, Care City is also working with local communities to foster innovation in their backyards. That includes everything from an online platform where patients and their carers can log information about their health to a wearable location device that alerts carers if someone with dementia leaves a designated safe space.

Many projects currently begin in the health and social care system, or are driven by charities who work with businesses. In the future, more products and services to help people live at home longer and stay safe in their communities may come from industry itself.

According to McNamara, progress is being made by businesses, among others, to help those with dementia engage with their communities but there’s work to be done to ensure these ideas spread further. “Dementia,” he says, “is everyone’s business.”

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How dementia-friendly shops, offices and cities offer hope for sufferers

Black residents acquire elevated entry to grocery shops post-Katrina, research says

New analysis launched ten many years right after hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans demonstrates that far more residents can accessibility fresh, wholesome foods at grocery shops. Lead researcher Adrienne Mundorf of the Tulane Policy Analysis Center has discovered not only that the absolute variety of grocery merchants in New Orleans has rebounded to pre-Katrina amounts, but also that racial disparities in entry to grocery shops have decreased.

Nationwide, scientific studies have identified that race is a major factor in accessibility to healthful foods: for illustration, a single research found that only eight% of African-Americans dwell in a census tract with a grocery store (compared to 31% of white Americans).

In New Orleans, racial disparities in food access worsened in the initial years after the storm. But by 2014, much more new supermarkets had moved into predominantly African American neighborhoods, the study published in the Journal of Urban Wellness found.

There is no vibrant line of proof that points from grocery retailers to far better well being, but several scientific studies, when considered together, link access and overall health. Americans who reside close to grocery shops consume more fruits and vegetables on average, and inserting grocery retailers with culturally appropriate, reasonably priced meals choices into struggling communities can lead to measurable enhancements in wellness. These enhancements are especially marked, Mundorf explained, when enhanced access to fresh meals is accompanied by nutrition education.

A major 2012 report by the Institute of Medicine focused on obesity as an environmental condition, arguing that policymakers can fight weight problems most successfully by ensuring that low-income communities and communities of shade have accessibility to healthful meals, risk-free spots to physical exercise, and proof-based mostly wellness training in schools and doctors’ offices. Mundorf’s findings suggest that policymakers in New Orleans are starting to heed this investigation.

Mundorf attributes the progress in New Orleans in element to a “feeling of rebuilding” in the city, and probably also to the Fresh Foods Retailer’s Initiative (FFRI), a cooperative venture among the city, the Food Trust, and the Hope Enterprise Corporation. The FFRI supplies low-curiosity and forgivable loans to help grocers broaden, rebuild, or begin new grocery retailers in vulnerable neighborhoods in New Orleans.

Julia Koprak, senior associate at the Meals Believe in, explained that the upfront financing aids get new merchants established. Nonetheless, FFRI-funded projects are anticipated to be self-sustaining in the lengthy run. “By decreasing the cost gap to get started, we’ve been in a position to get grocers established in neighborhoods where they wouldn’t otherwise,” Koprak explained.

So far, the FFRI has contributed funding for four of the 17 supermarkets that have been founded or rebuilt in New Orleans considering that 2007. Koprak stated the Food Trust hopes to announce new partnerships in New Orleans later this yr.

“Improving accessibility to groceries is not just about health,” Koprak mentioned. “It’s about financial improvement, neighborhood revitalization, and every person deserving entry to healthful fresh food no matter exactly where they dwell.”

And yet some New Orleans neighborhoods – including neighborhoods in New Orleans East and the Reduce Ninth Ward – nonetheless lack grocery merchants.

In the Reduced Ninth Ward, a historically African American community devastated by Katrina, the Backyard Gardener’s Network has arisen in element to handle the lack of accessibility to healthier foods. Volunteers from the community plant, increase and cook with each other, drawing on neighborhood food traditions and the understanding of Lower Ninth Ward gardeners and cooks.

Founder Jenga Mwenda has known as the lack of entry to grocery merchants in her neighborhood “an injustice”. Numerous residents in the Lower Ninth Ward also lack autos, and broken roads and sidewalks can be impossible to navigate – particularly for people with constrained mobility.

Mundorf and Koprak both pointed to the damaged infrastructure and historical lack of investment in the Reduced Ninth as elements that complicate accessibility to foods.

“Ultimately we actually help nutrition schooling, but until you have excellent entry the place you reside, it’s difficult to make use of that schooling,” Koprak stated. “It’s hard to request men and women to adhere to these nutrition tips and purchase and prepare healthful food if they have zero options.”

For Mundorf, the situation of foods entry is also private. She survived cancer and the accompanying remedy in her twenties.

“When I was carried out with therapy, my medical doctor said, ‘OK, you are younger, your cancer’s gone – remain healthier,’” she stated. “Access to fresh fruits and veggies was integral to my personal recovery. Everybody deserves that.”

Black residents acquire elevated entry to grocery shops post-Katrina, research says

Marijuana cookies to hit Washington shops but cannabis lollies are banned

Cookies and brownies laced with marijuana can go on sale in shops across Washington state after new rules were passed. Photograph: Erich Schlegel/Corbis

Marijuana stores in Washington state can sell marijuana in cookies, brownies and other baked goods but not in candies, lollipops or food items that might appeal to children, newly released rules stipulate.

Washington became the second US state to allow recreational sales of marijuana to adults on 8 July, when its first retail stores opened under a heavily regulated and taxed system approved by voters in 2012.

The state’s Liquor Control Board, which regulates the fledgling sector, published guidelines this week for the packaging and labelling of marijuana edibles. They prohibit any products, labels or packaging designed to be appealing to children, including lollipops and suckers, gummy candy and jelly beans. Edibles must be tested for potency and to ensure that the marijuana derivatives are spread evenly throughout the product.

Washington’s move to allow recreational sales comes amid a broader trend of liberalisation in the US. Recreational sales began in Colorado on 1 January.

So far, Washington state regulators have issued 25 licences to retailers and are still processing more than 300 others.

That has led to concerns about shortages. The first and only recreational marijuana shop to open in Seattle ran out of stock only three days after opening. Last week a Seattle-based company that makes marijuana-infused drinks and candies became the first business in the state to be approved, but it was not clear when the first products will hit shelves.

In Colorado, authorities ordered a recall of products made by the Denver-based company, At Home Baked, which was using a regular clothes washing machine to generate the cold water and centrifugal force needed to make “bubble hash”, a marijuana concentrate.

The Public Health Inspections division of the Denver Department of Public Health said it ordered the business to stop using the washing machine because it did not meet minimum sanitation standards.

Among the products recalled on Thursday were marijuana-infused brownies, candies and rice-crispy treats.

Marijuana cookies to hit Washington shops but cannabis lollies are banned