Manulife Employee Experience Vice President Amy MacGregor offers six employee engagement strategies for human resources (HR) to practice in the current work climate, reports Human Resources Director Canada . She explains that HR professionals need easy and efficient ways to communicate with employees fast, which makes mobile solutions critical. Mobile interfaces let HR teams and workers manage aspects that are relevant to their jobs in the moment. Also vital is peer-to-peer recognition for outstanding performance, with MacGregor noting that leaders and employees can earn points by participating in the Podium global recognition program. A third tip is collaboration and co-creation through tools like Mural, which teams can use it to make diagrams popular in design thinking and agile methodologies, and enable more effective meetings and workshops. Ongoing and regular feedback also is being normalized for assessing employee engagement, and MacGregor adds that HR teams can harness data to support decision-making related to employee issues and understand the current state of the workforce. Her sixth and final suggestion is to find ways for employees to maintain connections with their work community while working from home. Manulife's solution includes technology like Microsoft Teams and hosted events like virtual coffee chats, regular "ask me anythings" with senior leadership teams, happy hours, fitness challenges, and motivational speakers.

The U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) has funded four exploratory Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers (ADRCs) to further motivate innovative concepts and opportunities. They will extend current ADRC research projects with underrepresented populations like African Americans, Native Americans, and rural residents. The new ADRCs will be based at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, and Nashville's Vanderbilt University. The Nevada ADRC will devise new strategies in collaboration with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to accumulate high-quality standardized clinical data from rural residents. The UAB effort will explore Alzheimer's disease disparities in the Deep South, and tap a network of research volunteers, including African Americans, to better understand why and how early life experiences may affect Alzheimer's risk. Meanwhile, UNM will focus on rural communities, especially Native Americans, using mobile on-site screening and testing. Finally, Vanderbilt's ADRC will harness the resources of the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer's Center, which highlights vascular risk factors among African Americans and other groups disproportionately impacted by dementia yet historically overlooked in research.

A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found lumpy deposits of a protein called Medin, which arise in virtually all older adults, reduce blood vessel elasticity during aging and may raise the risk of vascular dementia, reports ScienceDaily . Medin is mainly found in the aorta and in blood vessels, but the researchers also detected Medin particles in postmortem human brain tissue samples and in old mice. The mice experiments also revealed that when the brain is active and a higher blood supply is needed, vessels with Medin deposits expand more slowly than those without Medin. "Brain vessels with Medin appear to be less flexible and therefore react more sluggishly," said Jonas Neher at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases. The ability of the vessels to rapidly expand is critical for regulating blood flow and supplying the brain with sufficient oxygen and nutrients. "If this ability is impaired, it can have far-reaching consequences for the functioning of organs" said Neher, implying that Medin deposits contribute to the deterioration of blood vessel function as one ages. He has theorized that "fibers run in the vessel wall that allow the blood vessel to stretch and contract. Since the protein deposits are embedded in the vessel wall, they may interfere with the function of these elastic fibers."

Some researchers suggest the aging immune system plays a key role in older adults' elevated vulnerability to COVID-19, reports the New York Times . The "innate" immune system clears out damaged cells and other bodily debris in the absence of infection, but Buck Institute for Research on Aging CEO Eric Verdin says this ability starts lagging behind the amount of debris as one ages. The overwhelmed innate immune system is constantly on alert and inducing inflammation, while the thinking goes that aging cells are simultaneously releasing inflammatory substances of their own. This elevated state of chronic inflammation is associated with frailty, increasing the difficulty of fighting off pathogens. Verdin and other experts say the aging immune system also might be connected to cases of severe COVID-19 inducing a cytokine storm, which can cause organ failure. Over-inflammation also may partly explain why vaccines are not as effective for seniors. Typically following the innate immune system's response to infection is the more targeted response of the adaptive immune system, which can be compromised in older bodies by the inflammatory chaos. A reduction in T cells in older adults compounds the problem; researchers say exploration of COVID-19 treatments must account for these various factors.

A national study of at least 6.7 million U.S. caregivers insured by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association estimated that 26 percent of unpaid caregivers struggling to achieve a work-family balance due to COVID-19 are more stressed and in worse physical health than before the pandemic, reports CNN . "Being a caregiver is lonely," explains Alex Drane with the Archangels caregiver advocacy movement. "And loneliness is a very real thing that has clinical implications. I think a bright spot of COVID-19 could be that it may help normalize the pervasiveness of this reality so that folks can feel less alone in it." Analysis showed that millennial caregivers were 82 percent more likely to have hypertension, had a 60 percent or higher increase in anxiety or major depression, and a 74 percent boost in obesity. Visits to emergency rooms and hospitalizations also were more likely among this generation. "Because they're younger, they haven't seen things go bad such as boomers have," Drane adds. "If you've lived through hard times before, you know you're going to survive the virus."

Many older adults in metropolitan Detroit are flocking to virtual employment due to COVID-19 and Michigan's stay-at-home orders, reports the Oakland Press . Among such jobs are online instructors for older adults, especially fitness instructors. For example, Shonece Leonard of Washington Township teaches virtual Zumba Gold, Zumba Toning, and Zumba Kids classes. Customer service is also proving popular as a virtual side gig for older adults. "As businesses continue to operate primarily online, companies need more virtual customer service agents," says Brie Reynolds at the FlexJobs website. Agents work by phone, e-mail, and online chat to address customer concerns and answer questions, with most agencies requiring at least a high school degree, six months of customer service- or related experience, and strong communication skills. Translators are in demand as well, as are virtual assistants. Online tutors can be a lucrative job for older adults, especially with many parents struggling to homeschool their children.

A new study published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology found that older adults caring for spouses just diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease are 30 percent more depressed than those whose spouses did not have Alzheimer's or related dementia, according to U.S. News & World Report . For individuals whose care often lasts for years and symptoms that continue to worsen, caregivers can suffer persistent, long-term depression. The researchers reviewed data on 16,650 older adults from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study. "The fact that we saw these depressive symptoms stay for at least two years, beyond two years, means they're taking a lot of the burden and it may be impacting the care they're able to provide over time," said Melissa Harris with the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Separately, Harris is talking to family caregivers to see how their lives have changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many resources and programs for patients or caregivers have been canceled or virtualized. "They don't get the same support and experience that they got before," she explained. "They described that the pandemic has really impacted their lives and their ability to care for themselves and also their loved ones."

New research published in Current Biology suggests that plenty of deep, restorative sleep could help ward off Alzheimer's disease, reports News-Medical . University of California, Berkeley neuroscientists Matthew Walker and Joseph Winer have formulated a technique for calculating a time frame for when Alzheimer's is most likely to manifest. "The sleep you're having right now is almost like a crystal ball telling you when and how fast Alzheimer's pathology will develop in your brain," said Walker. "The silver lining here is that there's something we can do about it. The brain washes itself during deep sleep, and so there may be the chance to turn back the clock by getting more sleep earlier in life." Participants who began experiencing more interrupted sleep and less non-rapid eye movement slow-wave sleep were most likely to show an increase in beta-amyloid plaque over the course of the study. "Measuring sleep effectively helps us travel into the future and estimate where your amyloid buildup will be," Walker noted, and he and Winer plan to use their findings to implement techniques to boost sleep quality. "Our hope is that if we intervene, then in three or four years the buildup is no longer where we thought it would be because we improved their sleep," said Winer.

COVID-19 infections tend to be more severe among older adults and males, and a study in PLOS Biology suggests that varying immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 due to age and sex may be reliant on viral load and the time-course of infection, reports ScienceDaily . Researchers extracted and sequenced viral RNA from swabs collected from 430 COVID-19 positive cases and 54 negative controls, then analyzed the hosts' antiviral and immune responses across infection status, viral load, age, and sex. Immune cell responses were inactive until after three days following onset of infection, while immune cell composition and function fluctuated with viral loads to suggest a dysfunctional antiviral response in males and seniors. "Collectively, our data demonstrate that host responses to SARS-CoV-2 are dependent on viral load and infection time with observed differences due to age and sex that may contribute to disease severity," the authors concluded.

A decline in telemedicine visits across the United States is forcing providers to recalibrate their services, reports STAT . Electronic health record company Epic estimates that telehealth visits fell from 69 percent of total encounters at the early height of the COVID-19 crisis in April to 21 percent by the middle of July. In the wake of this slippage, hospitals that scrambled to retrain staff to deliver virtual care in March are now struggling to rebalance according to shifting patient preferences and requirements. "We're trying to right-size, but it's really hard because during the pandemic we switched to nearly 100 percent virtual in some clinical areas, and we know that's not realistic or sustainable," said Michigan Medicine's Jessie DeVito. Several large health systems said the transition involves careful consideration of which clinical conditions should prioritize in-person attention and which cases can be handled just as effectively with virtual appointments. Also vital is determining when hybrid in-person/virtual visits will be most cost-efficient for providers as they attempt to optimally manage both patients and bottom lines after months of plummeting revenue. Not all specialities are seeing declines, as traditional providers are still conducting most mental health visits over phone or video, while specialists that usually provide more hands-on care — like orthopedists — are seeing more clients return to their offices.