Brain Health: You Can Make a Difference!
This webpage offers evidence-based resources that can help professionals, older adults, and people with disabilities promote brain health. You can use the resources to educate yourself and others.
- Brain Health Basics. Learn and teach others about the risks related to brain health and how to reduce them.
- Medicine, Age, and Your Brain. Learn and teach others about the impact that some medications can have on an older adult's brain.
- Brain Injury. Learn and teach others about how to prevent brain injury and how to get help if you do have one.
- Dementia. Learn how to create “dementia-capable” long-term services and supports at the state and local levels to help people who have Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.
- Oral Health. Learn how states can improve access to critical oral health services for older adults and adults with disabilities. Poor oral health is linked to conditions, like stroke, that can harm the brain.
Stay tuned for future additions to this site!
Thank you for using our Brain Health Resources. If you have any questions about the materials or how to use them, please contact jane.tilly@acl.hhs.gov.
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Brain Health Basics
ACL’s Brain Health Resource has a power point presentation, educator guide, one page handout for consumers, and a supplementary handout with a detailed list of resources on many brain health topics. The Administration for Community Living, National Institutes for Health (NIH), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed these materials together.
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Medicine, Age, and Your Brain
ACL’s Medicine, Age, and Your Brain has a power point presentation, a brochure for educators, and a one page handout for consumers.
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Brain Injury
Use this brochure, Brain Injuries: Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Community Living (PDF, 2.26MB), to educate yourself and others about brain injuries, how to prevent them, and what happens after they occur. The pamphlet covers:
- Brain injury statistics
- Causes of brain injuries
- Prevention of brain injuries
- Health and rehabilitation after injury
- Sources of help after injury content was developed in 2015.
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Dementia
Learn about dementia-capable long-term services and supports for people with the disease and their family caregivers. Issue brief topics:
- Dementia-capability Basics. This issue brief, Dementia-capable States and Communities: the Basics (PDF), defines dementia-capability and explores:
- Educating people about brain health
- Identifying and referring people with possible dementia for a diagnosis
- Ensuring that program eligibility and resource allocation take into account the impact of cognitive disabilities.
- Ensuring effective staff communication with people with dementia and their caregivers
- Ensuring services are person- and family-centered
- Educating workers about dementia
- Implementing quality assurance systems that measure dementia-capability
- Encouraging development of dementia-friendly communities
- Wandering. This issue brief, Responding to the Wandering Behavior of People with Dementia (PDF), discusses one of the more difficult symptoms of dementia by:
- Describing the service needs of people who are at risk of wandering
- Discussing person-centered approaches to meeting their needs
- Providing information about services options that can address wandering
- Promoting Community Living. This policy brief, Promoting Community Living for Older Adults Who Need Long-term Services and Supports (PDF, 297KB):
- Argues that many states could be reducing older adults’ use of nursing homes by providing more home and community-based services to them when they have disabilities.
- Summarizes the evidence about the effects of providing more HCBS
- Offers recommendations to states
- Describes the special circumstances of older adults with dementia
Oral Health
Poor oral health is largely preventable and linked to serious chronic diseases, some of which can damage the brain. This policy brief (PDF, 233KB) describes the high risk of poor oral health for older adults and adults with disabilities and the consequences to their health. The brief goes on to say that while Medicare does not cover most dental services, states have a number of options for expanding them.
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