The transition to virtual and telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic has created a technological rift between older adults who can and cannot participate, reports Kaiser Health News . Seniors barred from virtual interactions include those with dementia, hearing loss, and impaired vision. Moreover, seniors with limited financial resources may be unable to afford devices or the associated Internet service fees, while others lack both tech savvy and learning assistance. In this situation, the tech "have-nots" are more likely to face social isolation, skip medical care, and lack food or other necessities. When SCAN Health Plan, a Medicare Advantage plan with 215,000 members in California, polled its most vulnerable members after the pandemic struck, it learned that about one-third lacked access to the technology needed for telehealth appointments. Many enrollees also needed translation services that are often problematic for telehealth services to accommodate. Forward-thinking experts like Aging in Place Technology Watch blog founder Laurie Orlov say nursing, assisted living, and senior communities need to install community-wide Wi-Fi services to help give seniors more access to telehealth and virtual resources.

In New Mexico, Las Cruces-based Medicare insurance broker Heidi Moccia has started a virtual pen pal program to connect students and seniors around the state during the COVID-19 pandemic, reports the Las Cruces Sun-News . She said the genesis of "Adopt-A-Resident" was inspired by her work and the experiences of friends not being able to communicate with loved ones face-to-face during the quarantine. Moccia got in touch with the Haciendas at Grace Village senior living community and the J. Paul Taylor Academy (JPTA). Five sixth-graders, including Moccia's daughter, volunteered for four weeks of pen pals via Zoom with 10 Haciendas residents participating in the pilot project. Moccia said plans are underway to expand the program to involve all 24 seventh-grade students at JPTA. She is collaborating with JPTA physical education and health teacher Jamie Sells to incorporate calls into the social and emotional learning component of the school's curriculum by stressing empathy and social and emotional learning.

A study in Neuron details how Alzheimer's disease disrupts the brain network function of hippocampus cells for discriminating a distinct spatial environment, reports Futurity . The researchers used Alzheimer's disease model mice to suggest that the activity impairment of the entorhinal cortex, an area that supplies information to the hippocampus, most likely induces this disruption. "Our memory comes from activities of the brain network," said University of California, Irvine School of Medicine Professor Kei Igarashi. "To find out the cure for memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease, we need to understand how the network function is impaired." Spatial memory impairment, like wandering behavior, is one of the most worrying Alzheimer's symptoms, occurring in more than 60 percent of patients. It remains largely uncertain how deterioration of brain circuit function triggers spatial memory loss. "Our findings could lead to the development of a method to reactivate brain activity of the entorhinal cortex, which may help establish new treatments for preventing the progression of spatial memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease patients," said Igarashi.

A Florida senior living advocacy group has compared the state's soaring coronavirus death toll to a Category 5 hurricane, reports NBC News . The Florida Department of Health's latest figures for COVID-19 cases among long-term care community residents totaled 4,798, a 139 percent spike since June 22, while infections among staff members rose 82 percent to 7,084. "Over the past two weeks, Florida has become the epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic," said LeadingAge Florida CEO Steve Bahmer. A LeadingAge Florida situation report said one in five Floridians is 65 or older, making them especially susceptible to the virus. AARP Florida estimated that nearly half of Florida's 5,319 deaths were traced to infections at long-term care communities, yet residents and staffers make up less than 2 percent of the state's population. LeadingAge is urging state Sens. Marco Rubio (R) and Rick Scott (R) to support new COVID-19 relief legislation if it includes funding for rapid testing, personal protective equipment, "hero pay" for senior care workers, and funding for "aging services providers." "It didn't have to be this way, but there was not a coordinated federal response," said LeadingAge National CEO Katie Smith Sloan. "There's no prioritization of the most at-risk citizens."

An Australian study found declining physical performance may be a predictor of fracture risk independent of common risk factors like age and bone density for older women and men, reports Healio . The authors analyzed data from 811 women and 440 men at least 60 years old and followed from 2000 to 2018, who attended clinical visits every two or three years. During follow-up, 224 women and 74 men suffered at least one fracture, for an incidence rate of 30 per 1,000 person-years for women and 18 per 1,000 person-years in men. Measurements for all muscle parameters declined during follow-up, except for lean mass in women. Higher rates of decline in physical performance were associated with elevated fracture risk for women, while only decline in grip strength measurement was associated with fracture risk among men. Baseline performance and strength measurements were linked to greater fracture risk for men only, and findings persisted following adjustments for body mass index, smoking status, alcohol use, physical activity, and comorbidities. "The rates of decline in physical performance were significantly associated with a 2.3-fold increase in fracture risk in women and men," the authors said. "Baseline measurements of muscle strength and performance were also independently associated with similar magnitude of fracture risk in men."

Plamen Nikolov, assistant professor of economics at Binghamton University, State University of New York, thinks older Americans may find it hard to adjust to a cashless society that could arise in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports Newswise . "Older Americans are not as tech-savvy as younger generations and will likely be affected negatively due to their more limited use of electronic forms of payments," he observes. "Other vulnerable populations e.g., low-income populations who do not use mobile forms of payments are also likely to be negatively affected." The Pew Research Center estimates that about 30 percent of Americans make no purchases with cash in a typical week, and while use of cash is shrinking, older adults are slow to accept this. "Prior to the COVID-19 epidemic, about one-third of Americans under the age of 50 made no purchases in a typical week using cash," Nikolov says. "The same number is only a fifth among Americans above the age of 50. Furthermore, the slow adjustment to electronic or mobile forms of payments among older adults will likely have some implications for consumption and consumer expenditures."

Yale University's Telehealth Access for Seniors program has expanded since its launch in March to 26 states and delivered devices to more than 1,000 seniors, reports Becker's Hospital Review. The initiative aims to collect donated devices and distribute them to seniors and other vulnerable populations who can use them for telemedicine visits in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The program also supplies printed directions, e-mail, or phone calls with recipients to teach them how to use the devices. "We work to provide senior patients and lower-income communities with camera-enabled devices, like phones and tablets, so they can be connected to their physician during this pandemic," said program co-founder Siddharth Jain. The effort has collected 1,080 devices for donation at hospitals and clinics across the United States, and accumulated 300 volunteers and 75 partner clinics as of July 22.

A study in Ageing Research Reviews found that people in their 50s and 60s living alone are 30 percent more likely to develop dementia, reports the Science Times . Researchers at University College London (UCL) analyzed data from 21,666 people older than 55, and learned that those living unaccompanied were more likely to get Alzheimer's or other types of dementia. They suggested that loneliness, stress, and lack of cognitive stimulation could all factor into growing cases of dementia. UCL's Roopal Desai added that cognitive stimulation is crucial in maintaining neural connections. The authors inferred that if social isolation was completely eliminated, the number of dementia cases would decline by 8.9 percent. The Alzheimer's Society's Fiona Carragher said such research is essential to further understanding how the community can lower the risk of developing dementia.

ElderSource's Caring Connections phone program is getting an $83,000 boost through a new grant, to offer solace to lonely older adults in Jacksonville and other Florida markets during the COVID-19 crisis, reports News4JAX . Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned visitors from long-term care communities until September, adding urgency to maintaining human connections for older populations. Caring Connections offers seniors a pen pal-like relationship over the phone. ElderSource employees pair volunteers with seniors, and then they call their seniors twice a week, just to check in. "They make phone calls to them, just to provide a friendly voice and a listening ear to someone who just doesn't have that person to talk to and needs to talk to somebody," said ElderSource CEO Linda Levin. Seniors older than 60 and living alone, as well as long-term care community residents, qualify for the program.

A study from Colorado State University (CSU) published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that physical stress at work may be connected to faster brain aging and poorer memory, reports Technology Networks . The researchers linked occupational survey responses to brain-imaging data from 99 cognitively normal older adults 60 to 79 years old. Participants who reported high levels of physical stress in their most recent job had less volume in the hippocampus, and performed poorer on memory tasks. The hippocampus is essential for memory and is impacted in both normal aging and dementia. "By pure volume, occupational exposures outweigh the time we spend on leisure social, cognitive, and physical activities, which protect our aging minds and brains," said CSU Professor Aga Burzynska. She added that the linkage between "physical stress" and brain/memory was driven by physical demands at work, which included excessive reaching, or lifting boxes onto shelves, not necessarily aerobic activity. While leisure physical activity was associated with more hippocampal volume, the negative association with physical demands at work lingered. "Maybe future research can help us make some tweaks to our work environment for long-term cognitive health," Burzynska suggested.